“How? You can’t go back and wipe all the fingerprints off. You don’t even know all the places where you put your hands.”

  “Of course not,” I told her. “I’m going back and leave more fingerprints.”

  “How come?”

  “That’s one of the oldest gags in the book,” I told her. “If you can’t get rid of your fingerprints at the scene of a crime, make some excuse so you go back when you have a witness with you. Then you touch everything in sight. When the police find a fingerprint there’s nothing on it that tells when it was made. The only time element on this one is the powder cake out of the compact. I got that on my fingers and then touched things. I want to be sure to go through that routine again when I’m out there the second time.”

  “And when’s that going to be?”

  “Right now,” I told her. “Now look, Bertha. Get busy and try and locate Lamont Hawley. The guy has a telephone somewhere, and the insurance company has some kind of an investigative service that has a night number. Get hold of Hawley and tell him what the score is.

  “You can keep this report from the Ace High agency. I don’t want to have it with me. There’s one clue there. Notice that a part of the second page has been torn off, but there’s an expense account there with a long-distance bill of a dollar and ninety cents. And the woman’s shoe that I found out there was sold in Salt Lake City. So I have an idea you’ll find the telephone call was made to Salt Lake City and that’s where the client was living. As soon as the Ace High client found out I was a detective, she grabbed a plane and flew on to—”

  “She?” Bertha asked.

  “The shoe,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re taking too much for granted, Donald. I still think it’s Lamont Hawley.”

  “I’m beginning to think it may be a woman in Salt Lake,” I said. “Anyway Hawley should know about what’s happening now.”

  Bertha said, “Dammit, I was just getting comfortable! I got that goddam girdle off and now I’ve got to struggle into it again. I wish to hell you could work cases the way other people do. There’s no reason on earth why we couldn’t build up a respectable, decent agency with the right kind of clients and—”

  “You’ve got the right kind of a client now,” I told her. “That is, you told me he was the right kind when you closed with him.”

  “Well, I’m not nearly as sure now as I was a couple of days ago,” Bertha said. “If he’s hiring one detective agency and then hiring another—fry me for an oyster. I’ll fix that bird!”

  “All right,” I told her. “He’s all yours. Fix him.”

  I crossed over to Bertha’s telephone, dialed information and said, “I want the number of Lorraine Robbins of Colinda, please.”

  Information said, “Just a moment,” and a short time later gave me the number. “It’s three-two-four, nine-two-four-three. You can dial it from your phone.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I dialed the number and after a moment heard Lorraine Robbins’ voice, calmly efficient, saying, “Yes?”

  “Lorraine,” I said, “this is Donald Lam.”

  “Oh, yes, Donald.”

  I said, “I have to see you tonight on a matter of the greatest importance.”

  “Oh, now really, Donald,” she said, “when I handed you that line this afternoon I was kidding.”

  “What line?” I asked innocently.

  “I told you that I might give you a lot.…Look, Donald, it’s late and I’m going to bed and…I don’t like men who have to take half the night getting their nerve up to—”

  “This is business,” I said. “This is something that’s tremendously important to you and to your employers.”

  “Can’t it keep until office hours?”

  “It can’t keep.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk with you.”

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll fall for the gag. But now look, Donald, I’m going to tell you something straight from the shoulder. If this is a gag you’re using as a build-up, you’re going to be wasting an awful lot of time.

  “I don’t want to have someone ring me up at this hour of the night and tell me it’s an emergency business matter and then use the contact as an excuse to start making passes. You’re four hours late for passes; no cocktails, no dinner.…If you’re intending to make passes, say so right now and—”

  “It’s business, Lorraine,” I told her. “I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise.”

  “I don’t know that that’s so flattering.”

  “At this hour, I meant. I’d have called you earlier.”

  “Well, why didn’t you?”

  “I was busy.”

  “You’re doing better all the time, Donald,” she said. “I was just going to bed. I’ll be waiting up. Do you have the address?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the Miramar Apartments. Two-twelve.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “How long?”

  “It’ll take me a little over half an hour. I’m calling from the city.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  I hung up and saw Bertha’s speculative eyes surveying me. “Who was that?”

  “Lorraine Robbins,” I said. “She’s secretary to Holgate and Maxton, the subdividers.”

  Bertha shook her head. “You sure as hell cover ground,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m paid for,” I told her virtuously.

  “With women,” Bertha added dryly.

  There was no use trying to answer that so I walked out and pulled the apartment door shut behind me.

  7

  Lorraine Robbins answered my ring almost at once. She was dressed in a neat suit and was all business.

  “Hello, Donald. Come in. What gives?”

  I said, “This Miramar Apartments. Does everyone in Colinda live here?”

  “No, why?”

  “I know some other people who live here.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, it isn’t that important,” I said smiling, “but I just wondered why everyone seemed to have this address.”

  “It’s the town’s swankiest working girl’s apartment house,” she said. “It’s new, modern and the service is fine. They really keep it warm in the winter and they have air-conditioning in the summer. Yet the rates aren’t up in high C. It’s quite a job getting in here. They have a waiting list as long as your arm.

  “Now, what’s bothering you, Donald? Do you want to sit down?”

  I seated myself and she went over and sat in a chair across the room and kept her knees together and her skirt down.

  I said, “I have to see Mr. Holgate tonight and I want you to be there.”

  “You want me to be there!” she said indignantly. “If Mr. Holgate wants me to—”

  “Take it easy,” I told her. “This is a matter of considerable importance.”

  “To whom? To you or to us?”

  “To all of us.”

  “What’s it about?”

  I said, “That automobile accident. Do you think there’s any possibility Mr. Holgate could have been lying about it?”

  She said, “In the first place Mr. Holgate doesn’t lie. And in the second place there was nothing for him to lie about. He admits liability and his story of the accident coincides with yours.”

  “Well,” I said, “I have reason to believe there’s a detective agency working on the thing.”

  She laughed and said, “Of course there is, silly. There’s an insurance company involved and they’re trying to find out the nature and the extent of the injuries of this girl that was hit. Oh, that’s the one you were thinking about! Her address is here in the Miramar Apartments, too. That is, it was. I don’t think she’s here any more.”

  “Well,” I told her. “I think there’s something very much out of the ordinary going on and I’m somewhat alarmed.”

  “Just what gives you that idea and why are you coming to me with it?”

  I reached in my pocket, took out an extra clipping I had cut from the newspaper and said, “I suppose you folks are responsible for this.”

  “For what?”

  “Offering to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for persons who had seen the accident.”

  She came across the room to take the clipping out of my hand almost before I had a chance to start over toward her. She grabbed the clipping, looked at it, then looked at me.

  “We didn’t put that ad in, Donald. We don’t know anything about it.”

  I said, “My car’s down here. Let’s go talk to Holgate.”

  “I’ll have to try and locate him,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of night numbers.”

  I said, “He’s out at the subdivision.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I drove past on my way in. The place was all lit up. I thought for a minute of going in and telling him to wait there, that we were coming out as soon as I could pick you up. Then I felt that it wouldn’t be but ten or fifteen minutes longer to pick you up and—”

  “Well, he may have left the place. You should have stopped in and told him to stay there. Wait a minute and I’ll call and—”

  “No,” I told her, looking at my watch. “There isn’t time for that. We’re going out there. He’s out there. I’m sure he is.”

  For a moment there was another flicker of suspicion.

  “Donald,” she said, “you’re playing a game. I don’t know what it is. If this is an excuse to get me out there and we find the place is all dark and you think you’re going to get me in the office and make passes or cuddle up on one of those davenports out there, you just have six more guesses coming.

  “When a man makes a pass at me, I want it to be a forward pass. I don’t like this lateral pass stuff.”

  “Okay,” I told her, “come on.”

  She switched out the lights in the apartment, said, “I’m ready.”

  We went down to my car and I drove in silence. I could see her looking me over carefully. Eventually she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Some difference.”

  “What’s different?” I asked.

  “When I was driving you out to the place,” she said, “you were looking at me and speculating as to just how far I’d go.”

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Now,” she said, “you’re doing the driving and I’m looking at you and trying to speculate on how far you’ve been.”

  “I’ve covered a lot of territory,” I said.

  “Darned if you haven’t, and believe me your story had better be good or you’re going to find yourself in some mighty hot water.

  “If you think you’re going to shake Holgate down for two hundred and fifty bucks, you’re due to have a surprise. He knows nothing about that ad and he wouldn’t pay you a dime.”

  “I don’t want a dime,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I wish I knew just what you do want. You’re playing games.…I was prepared to like you when I met you and dammit, I still like you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said. “It’s just the chemistry of the situation. Frankly, I either like them or I don’t. I’ve always been like that. I tell when I get my first exposure to masculine magnetism whether I like or whether I don’t like. With you, I liked and I still like, but I’m going to be awfully damned certain where you’re expecting to plant your feet before I tell you to jump.”

  “Fair enough,” I told her.

  Again we were silent.

  I turned off the main road and she could see the lights in the buildings at the subdivision.

  “Well,” she said, settling back in the seat, “that’s a surprise.”

  “You didn’t expect it?”

  “No. Frankly, I didn’t. I thought you were going to get me out here and suggest we go inside and try and locate Mr. Holgate on the office phone.”

  “I told you the place was lit up. I could see it from the road.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” she said. “There aren’t any cars here.”

  “Well, the lights are on. Someone’s here.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “Whoever is here would have a car if he was still here.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t leave without turning off the lights, would he?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, he’s here.”

  I swung the car around and parked it in front of the door, trying to put it in almost exactly the same spot where I had left it earlier in the evening.

  Lorraine jumped to the ground and hurried to the door of the reception room.

  She opened the office, walked inside, gave a quick glance at things, then suddenly came to a stop. “Who’s been using my typewriter?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “That electric typewriter,” she said. “The cover’s off and the motor’s running.”

  She went over and put her hand on the machine. I promptly put my hand on the machine and said, “It’s been running for some time. It’s warm. Perhaps you didn’t shut the motor off this afternoon when you quit work.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Somebody’s been in here and has been using that typewriter.”

  She turned and strode toward Holgate’s office, put her hand on the knob of the door, stopped, knocked in a perfunctory manner and then opened the door and walked in.

  I was right on her heels.

  “For God’s sake!” she said.

  We stood there surveying the wreckage. I said, “Here’s a broken compact and—what is this, a powder cake?”

  I picked up a piece of the cake.

  “That’s right. It fell out of the compact.”

  She took the piece I handed her, sniffed it, looked at it thoughtfully, said, “Probably a blonde.”

  I moved over to the shoe. “Here’s a woman’s shoe. Now, what would this mean?”

  I picked it up and handed it to her.

  “Probably some girl was trying to find a weapon,” she said. “She took off the shoe and used the heel.”

  “Rape?” I asked.

  “Not with Holgate.”

  “How about his partner, Chris Maxton?”

  “What do you know about Maxton?”

  “What do you?”

  “I don’t know about his sex habits, if that’s what you’re leading up to.”

  I said, “Well, there’s evidently been quite a fight here. Someone must have come in through the window.”

  “Why through the window?”

  “It’s open.”

  “Why not out through the window?”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s a thought. Let’s see.”

  I sat on the windowsill, then turned and dropped down to the ground, waited there a few moments while she was over inspecting the files that were strewn on the floor. Then I crawled back in the window and said, “A person could get out through the window all right, but why would they do that?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Lorraine said. “I want to know what’s happened here and I want to know what’s happened to Mr. Holgate.”

  “And the woman,” I said.

  “Well, if she lost the fight,” Lorraine said, “you can pretty much figure what happened to her. In any event, she’s gone.”

  “Any papers missing?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she said. “There’s one paper I’m looking for in particular.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, walking to the lavatory.

  She didn’t say anything for a while but kept looking through the jackets until she found a manila filing envelope, one of the kind that had a flap and a cord that tied it shut.

  She opened the flap, looked inside, then handed the jacket to me. “You take a look,” she said.

  “But there’s nothing in here,” I told her.

  “Look on the outside of the jacket.”

  I looked and found in neat feminine handwriting the designation, “Affidavit of Donald Lam, witness to Mr. Holgate’s accident.”

  “That’s what’s missing,” she said.

  Lorraine reached for the telephone.

  “Hold it,” I said.

  “Hold what?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Notify the sheriff’s office.”

  “Why?”

  “Why!” she exclaimed. “Good God, look at this wreckage!”

  “All right,” I said. “What’s been taken?”

  “I told you. Your affidavit.”

  “I’ll make you another one.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  I said, “Nothing of value has been taken, at least as far as you know. The place is a wreck, a chair has been smashed, there are a lot of files to clean up.

  “You notify the sheriff’s office and immediately they come out here and start taking fingerprints. Then the newspapers are notified and there’s a lot of publicity. You’re working for the firm of Holgate and Maxton. Do you think they’d want that publicity?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s find out before we blow any whistles.”

  She thought that over and said, “Donald, you may be giving me some pretty darned good advice. Any more suggestions?”

  I said, “Let’s try to figure out who would want that affidavit bad enough to get in here and smash things up, and who do you suppose had the fight?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  I said, “It is Holgate’s office. There was a fight.”

  She said, “That’s obvious.”

  I said, “A fight means two people have alternate objectives and they resort to violence to protect their positions.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “It’s fairly obvious that one of the persons engaged in the fight must have been Holgate. This is his office. He was either in here when the intruders came in, or the intruders came in and then he came in. Holgate hasn’t seen fit to notify the authorities. Therefore, there’s no reason why we should.”

  “You’ve been over that. I’m sold on that idea.”

  I said, “I’m trying to find out what the fight was about and what there is about my affidavit that was important enough for somebody to break in and try to locate it.”

  She said, “Donald, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody else. But I want to ask you a question and I want a frank answer.”