It was an alligator leather shoe bearing the trademark of a shoe store in Salt Lake City.

  It was a neat, narrow little bit of leather with class written all over it. That shoe had cost plenty and called for a dainty high-arched foot.

  I walked over to take a look at the litter of papers on the floor by the filing case.

  For the most part the papers that had spilled out of the files onto the floor were in brown paper folders, but many had been either pulled out of the folders and scattered over the floor by someone searching for some particular paper, or when the contents of the file drawers had tumbled out, these papers had fallen from some of the envelopes. These papers proved on inspection to be options, contracts and receipts covering down payments. Nearly all of them were on printed forms.

  One piece of paper, however, caught my eye. It was a sheet of flimsy with typing in a purple copying ink.

  I knew that type of paper all too well. It was the paper used in many detective agencies for making reports to the client.

  I pushed the other pieces of paper aside and pulled out this sheet of flimsy, finding as I did so that two other papers were attached to it.

  The report read:

  “Following instructions to keep subject under surveillance it was deemed advisable to keep a watch on her car to see when she left her apartment house, inasmuch as there was no practical way of keeping her apartment under surveillance except by stationing a man in the corridor, and this would have defeated purpose of client in asking for surreptitious surveillance.

  “Therefore, when it became apparent another person was also keeping watch on this car, client was notified by long-distance telephone and we were instructed to put operative on this new subject in order to ascertain his identity.

  “At two-twenty-five subject Doris Ashley left apartment and entered her automobile, driving to supermarket in accordance with routine daily procedure.

  “Man who had been keeping her car under surveillance drove to supermarket, parked his car so close to that of subject’s she could not get in with groceries. Later on this individual, pretending this was not his car, jumped the switch wiring, apparently as an excuse to get acquainted with subject, and this was successful in that subject invited man to ride with her.

  “He rode to a point near Eleventh and Main, then abruptly left subject’s automobile, and our operative was unable to pick him up again until the following day when he was again spotted and followed.

  “This man’s car on which he had jumped wires, turned out to be a car rented from Continental Drive-Yourself Agency in the city but no information was immediately forthcoming on identity of person renting the car.

  “The next day this man again was picked up, tailed to the supermarket. At supermarket he approached one of checkers just as subject was about to pay for groceries. Subject recognized him and seemed glad to see him. At her apparent invitation he got in her car, this time riding back with her all the way to subject’s apartment. Again it was ascertained this party was driving a car rented from Continental Drive-Yourself Agency, but this time by pretending car had been involved in an accident, our city office was able to ascertain identity of person renting the car.

  “This individual is Donald Lam, and Lam is a partner in the detective agency of COOL & LAM.

  “This agency is rather unorthodox in its operations and little can be found out about it since it does not seem to be catering to regular clients but goes in for sharpshooting on cases having unusual angles.

  “Donald Lam is locally reported to be highly ingenious and resourceful, exceedingly daring and at times undoubtedly disregards professional ethics in order to obtain some real or fancied advantages for his clients.

  “In accordance with instructions we immediately communicated information to client by long-distance telephone as soon as it was obtained.

  “At this time Donald Lam was in subject’s apartment. “Upon receipt of information as to the identity of the person

  in question, client instructed us immediately to discontinue all shadowing operations, to close the case, submit final bill and take no further action.

  “In accordance with these instructions operative was recalled to city office and the case closed.

  “ACE HIGH DETECTIVE AGENCY per J.C.L., Manager “Los Angeles Branch”

  I studied that report for a moment, then folded and shoved it in my coat pocket. I looked around but couldn’t find any jacket or brown paper envelope from which this paper had spilled.

  I noticed a door half open which led to a lavatory. I went to that door, opened it wide and was about to enter the room when I heard steps in the outer office.

  I ran to the window and looked out. There was a car parked just behind mine. I couldn’t see it too clearly but it was a big shiny car.

  I pushed aside the curtains on the open window, eased myself over the sill and dropped to the ground. I started walking toward my car, then thought better of it and sprinted.

  I jumped in the car, started the motor and eased into motion as noiselessly as possible.

  Someone yelled.

  I could see a man’s frame silhouetted against the light in the room, standing in the open window from which I had made my departure.

  “Hey, you!” he yelled. “Come back here! Stop where you are!”

  I stepped on the throttle.

  I had a blurred glimpse of the man climbing through the window and running across the lawn toward his car. Then I skidded into a turn at the end of the driveway, hit the paved road and pushed down the foot throttle.

  I had gone about half a mile before I picked up the headlights in my rearview mirror.

  I gave the car everything it had.

  A boulevard stop loomed ahead. I shot through it as fast as the car would go, negotiated a turn with screaming tires, hit a straightaway and my headlights picked up another boulevard stop ahead. This time it was a main thoroughfare. I could see headlights approaching as I came to the white line but I pressed my hand on the horn button and shot through.

  There was a brief hundredth of a second when headlights were glaring into my eyes from the left-hand side at a distance of not over thirty feet. Then I squeezed on by and was out in the clear.

  That gave me time enough to execute a U-turn, slow the car and come driving sedately back.

  I was just at the thoroughfare intersection when the car that had been following me roared across the main thoroughfare, also ignoring the boulevard stop, and shot on past me.

  The driver was too busy with what he was doing to notice cars that were coming toward him and he never even slowed down as he shot past. I don’t think he ever saw anything except my headlights.

  I eased out into the main boulevard and joined the stream of traffic.

  I headed on the main road to Los Angeles and as soon as I found a service station that had a telephone booth, called Bertha at her apartment.

  Bertha’s voice was irascible. “What is it this time?” she asked, “and why the hell don’t you make reports and let me know what you’re doing? Our client has been wondering if you’ve discovered anything and I have to pull that old crap about making progress and being too busy at the moment to make a written report.”

  “All right,” I said, “it wasn’t crap. I was making progress and I was too busy to make a report. Now I’ve got to talk with you.”

  “What about?”

  “About progress.”

  “I’m in bed.”

  “Well, get up,” I told her. “You shouldn’t go to bed this early anyway.”

  “Dammit to hell, Donald Lam!” she screamed in the telephone. “You know I go to bed early and read myself to sleep. I—”

  “Read yourself awake,” I told her. “I’ll be there in less than half an hour.”

  6

  Bertha Cool opened the door of her apartment as soon as I rang. She had on pajamas and her hair was in curlers. She was mad.

  “Now will you tell me what this is all about?” she demanded as I entered the apartment and took a chair. “Why in hell can’t you go to the office, tap this stuff out on a typewriter and have it so I can show it to the client in the morning?

  “Or, the way that damned secretary of yours looks at you with those puppy-love eyes of hers, she’d probably welcome the opportunity to have you get her out of bed and start dictating. Or you might not have to get—”

  I interrupted. “This thing is too hot for anything like that, Bertha.”

  “What’s hot about it?”

  “I’ve been made.”

  “By whom?”

  “The Ace High Detective Agency.”

  “What the hell are they doing cutting in on our case?”

  “They’re not cutting in on our case. They’ve got a case of their own. They were hired to keep Doris Ashley under surveillance and to check on everything she did.

  “So when I showed up on the scene and started watching her car, the Ace High operative picked me up and reported to the client, whoever the client was, on long-distance telephone.”

  “Somebody here?” Bertha Cool asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “I said long-distance, Bertha. This is a dial operation now from Colinda. Here, take a look at this.”

  I handed Bertha the Ace High report.

  “Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said when she had finished reading. “Do you suppose, Donald, that Lamont Hawley had another agency working on the case—How did you get this, Donald?”

  I told her what had happened.

  “Then Hawley must be double-crossing us.”

  “How else would the Ace High have been on the job?” I asked.

  Bertha Cool’s greedy little eyes started snapping. “That’s it, Donald,” she said. “That’s what happened. The sonofabitch got two detective agencies, the Ace High and ours, and played one against the other. The Ace High people had been on the job for several days and hadn’t got results, so someone told the Consolidated Interinsurance people about you and how you could handle women and that explains why they terminated the employment of the Ace High people as soon as they found out you had made a personal contact with Doris Ashley.”

  “Whatever the reason,” I told her, “let’s have a showdown on this thing. I don’t like being played for a sucker. I don’t like to have a client give me only part of the facts.

  “Let’s get Lamont Hawley in the office and hand it to him straight from the shoulder.”

  Bertha said, “That’s the spirit, Donald!”

  She suddenly started blinking her eyes. “Wait a minute, Donald. We don’t have anything to support our claim except this report of the Ace High people, and of course Hawley is going to want to know how we got hold of that and—”

  “Don’t tell him how we found out,” I said. “Let him wonder.”

  Bertha thought that over, then suddenly her face wreathed in smiles.

  “I’d just like to see that sonofabitch’s face, Donald. Here he is, trying to play one detective agency against the other. He’s had the Ace High people trying to make a contact. They get nowhere. We come in, make a contact first rattle out of the box and then the next thing he knows we find out all about the other detective agency and his instructions to them. That’s going to curl his hair!”

  “All right,” I told Bertha. “Now the question arises, where did that report come from?”

  “You told me you got it out of Holgate’s office.”

  “All right, how did Holgate get it?”

  “He—Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said, and lapsed into silence.

  “He got it from some woman,” I said, “who came to the office. And shortly after that someone got into the office and a general fight started. Holgate and the woman were mixed up in it or else the man who came in and started the fight had a woman with him.”

  “How do you know?”

  I told her about the shoe.

  “She’d have gone back and gotten that shoe,” Bertha said. “A woman can’t walk with high heels on one foot and nothing on the other.”

  “Perhaps she kicked off the other shoe,” I said, “and went in her stocking feet.”

  “She could have,” Bertha said, “if for some reason she felt it was dangerous to go back to get the other shoe. All right, what happened then? There was a fight. Who won?”

  “The intruder won.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he just about wrecked the office looking for something.”

  “This report?” Bertha asked.

  “This report, hell,” I said. “This report was left there and there’s a damned good chance this report was taken there by the intruder, whoever he was.”

  “How do you figure that out?”

  I said, “The intruder came to the office. He started talking with Holgate. Then he pulled this report out of his pocket and handed it to Holgate for him to look over. That probably started the fight. The office was pretty well wrecked. This girl was in on it because she hit someone over the head with her purse and bent the frame on the purse, at the same time spilling the contents of the purse to the floor.

  “When she left, she left the purse because it was bent and wouldn’t close, but took the things she wanted to take with her and probably wrapped them in a towel.”

  “Why a towel?”

  “There was a lavatory off the office and there weren’t any towels on the rack, but there was one towel that had been jerked to the floor.”

  “Well,” Bertha said, “they can’t tie any of that in with us.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the thing that bothers me.”

  “Why does it bother you?”

  “Because this car drove up while I was there and some man came in the office. He could have been a night watchman. It could have been police. I don’t know who it was. I jumped out the window and made a getaway. He took after me and I outdrove him to a point where I could double back and throw him off the trail.”

  “Well, you got away from him.”

  “Suppose he got the license number of the automobile?” I said. “I’d left the rented automobile and was driving the agency car that’s registered in our names.”

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Bertha asked. “My God, if that man got the license number—”

  “I was cutting down on expenses,” I said.

  Bertha glowered.

  I grinned at her.

  After a while Bertha said, “Don’t we have to report something like that to the police?”

  “Something like what?”

  “Where a man’s office has been broken into and—”

  “How do we know it was broken into?” I said. “The office door was open. It’s a public place. Probably Holgate invited the person in.”

  “Well then, the place was wrecked and papers were stolen and—”

  “How do we know papers were stolen?” I asked her. “Someone was looking for something in the files and was rather careless in the way he conducted his search. He didn’t pull the filing drawers out and put them back, he pulled out one drawer after another and after they were all out the weight of the papers in the open drawers shifted the center of gravity so that the whole filing case toppled over. When it did, the papers spilled out and the person who had been conducting the search pushed the filing cabinet back into an upright position and that was all. How do we know he took anything?”

  Bertha thought that over.

  “In other words,” I said, “we don’t know any crime has been committed and there’s no reason for us to report a crime if there hasn’t been any crime.”

  “You’re a brainy little bastard,” Bertha said. “I wouldn’t dare to skate on that thin ice but if you think you can get away with it, go to it.”

  “The point is,” I said, “I want to know what happened to Holgate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he wait until the intruders, whoever they were, had left and—”

  “Don’t call them intruders,” Bertha said. “Call them visitors. I like this idea of yours that it’s a public office and that Holgate probably invited them in and tried to sell them a lot.”

  “All right,” I said, “when his visitors departed, did Holgate take off after them or—”

  “Sure, he took off after them,” Bertha said. “His car was gone. You said that when you drove up there, there weren’t any cars at all.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, he didn’t walk out to the place,” Bertha said. “He had his car there. The visitors left in their car and then Holgate left in his.”

  “Before or after he called me?” I asked.

  “Probably before,” Bertha said.

  “Let’s hope so,” I told her.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know, Bertha. Since they know who I am, this thing may get a little ticklish. I think we should call Lamont Hawley. Do you have a night number where you can reach him?”

  “Hell, no,” Bertha said. “He didn’t give me any night number. This was supposed to be respectable business. He gave me a private number but I don’t suppose—

  “My God, Donald, I don’t know what it is about you. Every time you start working on a case the damned thing blows up into some kind of an emergency and every now and then there’s a corpse.”

  “Well, let’s hope this is the then,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If it’s a corpse now,” I told her, “it could be bad business.”

  Bertha blinked her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about what would happen if it should turn out there was a corpse.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Holgate.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “What’s silly about it?”

  Again Bertha blinked her eyes. “Dice me for a carrot!” she said.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Bertha said, “Wait a minute. You’re just talking about somebody seeing the license number on your automobile. But what about fingerprints? You went out of there in a hell of a hurry. You must have left—”

  “I left fingerprints all over the place,” I said. “Don’t be silly. I’m going to fix that.”