“Why would Nostrander figure in it?”

  I said, “Roberta Fenn was feeling pretty low. She went to New Orleans. Edna Cutler was m New Orleans. She’s the wife of Marco Cutler. Marco was about to give her a terrific smear in a divorce action. Edna couldn’t face the music. She went to New Orleans, got Roberta to pose as her double. When the papers arrived to be served on Edna, the process server served them on Roberta.

  “Marco Cutler got his divorce. He didn’t wait for the final decree. He married a wealthy woman who has ideas about such things. She may be going to have a baby. Edna Cutler chose that time to appear on the scene and calmly observe that she’d never heard of any divorce. It was a slick stunt. She’s got him over a barrel unless he can prove fraud or collusion.”

  “Can he do that?” .

  “He might be trying.”

  “How?” ‘

  “By hiring detectives.”

  “What detectives?”

  “Us.”

  Bertha’s eyes kept blinking rapidly. “Fry me for an oyster,” she said at length, almost under her breath.

  “Get it?” I asked.

  “Of course I get it. Marco Cutler is in the millionaire class. If he’d hired us and told us what he wanted us to find out, we’d have soaked him good and proper. Moreover, we’d have been able to blackmail him. He got this New York lawyer to come out here, and because the man was from New York, we kept thinking it was a New York client that was involved in the case.”

  “Go ahead, you’re doing fine.”

  “Then this lawyer, posing as a man by the name of Smith, got hold of Roberta Fenn and tried to pump her. When he didn’t get anywhere, he came to us. He knew exactly what he wanted us to find out, but he wouldn’t tip his hand. He sent us to New Orleans and told us to find Roberta Fenn, knowing that finding her would be a cinch. What he really wanted was to have us start investigating her past, get all the dope we could on her, and then talk with her. He thought that she might talk to someone who was trying to close up an estate where there was some money in it for her.”

  I said, “That could have been it all right.”

  “And because he handed us that song and dance,” Bertha went on, “I made him a bedrock price. Oh, it was a price that had plenty of velvet, about two or three times what we’d have worked for in town, but—gosh, if I’d only known.”

  “You know now.”

  Bertha blinked at me and said, “That’s right, I do.” . I said, “Here’s something else that happened.”

  “What?”

  “I put Emory Hale in your apartment. He hadn’t been there very long when he got to rummaging around in an old desk and found some clippings dealing with this murder of Howard Chandler Craig. It seems that Craig was riding with Roberta Fenn when the so-called love bandit stepped out of the bushes and took Craig’s money and triad to uk« ki« girl. Craig wouldn’t stand for it, and got shot. At least, that’s the story the girl told.”

  “Go ahead,” Bertha said. “Give me the rest of it. I said, “In the bottom part of the desk was a thirty-eight caliber revolver. Craig was shot with a thirty-eight caliber bullet.”

  “Then Roberta Fenn was guilty of that murder. The story she told about the stick-up was all a lie.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Well, if it turns out that was the gun that committed the murder, it’s a cinch that’s right.” I shook my head. “Why not?”

  I said, “Hale got in touch with Roberta Fenn at a time when he was posing as Archibald C. Smith who was in the insurance business in Chicago. He tried to get Roberta to talk. Either she wouldn’t talk or else she didn’t talk the words Hale wanted to hear.”

  “What sort of words?” Bertha asked. “That there was some collusion between her and Edna Cutler, that Edna knew of the filing of the divorce action, or anticipated a divorce action would be filed, and that papers would be served, and deliberately put Roberta Fenn in her apartment for the purpose of avoiding service.”

  “So then what?” Bertha asked.

  I said, “Marco Cutler got a decree of divorce. He got an interlocutory decree, he didn’t get his final. It’s due. If Edna Cutler came into court, and had that interlocutory judgment set aside on the ground that she had known nothing about the action, and that summons had not been served upon her-now there’s one other angle. If the thing was the other way around, we’re being played for suckers.”

  “What do you mean?” Bertha asked. “Suppose the whole thing is a beautiful frame-up. Suppose we’re to appear in the role of giving it authenticity and a touch of first-class respectability.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Suppose Marco Cutler wanted to get a divorce. Suppose he knew that Edna Cutler would contest it. He didn’t want to get in the middle of a contested divorce action because he himself was living in a glass house, and, therefore, wasn’t able to throw stones. All right, he gets Roberta Fenn to go to New Orleans. She gets in touch with Edna Cutler. Edna is feeling pretty gloomy. Roberta skillfully plants in her mind the idea that it might be a swell stunt to disappear. Edna agrees. After the disappearance has been staged, Roberta passes the word on to Marco, and Marco gets his lawyers to file suit and send the papers to New Orleans for service. They serve Roberta as Edna Cutler. Edna actually never knows a single thing about the divorce action. They’ve wiped her off the slate without even giving her a chance.”

  “Then what?” Bertha asked.

  I said, “Everything lies dormant until Edna finds out about it. Then just as she’s getting ready to do something drastic, Hale comes to us on the theory that he wants us to find Roberta Fenn. We find her. Roberta is very coy. She arranges to be found at just the right time. In fact, if I hadn’t found her by a process of detective work, she’d probably have stumbled into me on the street or dropped in at Jack O’Leary’s Bar when I happened to be there.”

  “Go ahead,” Bertha said. “All that stuff is so elemental there’s no use wasting time on it. Give me the real lowdown.”

  I said, “The game was that we’d find Roberta. She’d get very, very friendly. She might even encourage me to make a pass at her. Then she’d ‘tell me all,’ only the ‘all’ would be that Edna Cutler certainly acted strangely about having her take her name. It would be just enough to indicate that there was a big frame-up on Edna’s part to nick her husband. Edna would get thrown out of court.”

  “Tickle me for a peach!” Bertha said. “What are we going to do now, lover?”

  “Absolutely nothing-not until we find out whether we’re being played for suckers, or whether the whole thing is on the up and up.”

  “We’ve got to find Roberta Fenn.”

  “I have.”

  “Have what?”

  “Found her.”

  “Where is she?”

  I grinned at Bertha and said, “I’ve taken care of that little thing. You can search New Orleans from now until next year at this time and you’d never find her.”

  “Why?”

  “I mean that I’ve hidden her, and this time I’ve made a good job of it.”

  “What’s the idea of hiding her? Why not tell Hale that we’ve got her, and smoke the whole thing out into the open?”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, we’d—then we’d finish our contract.’

  “And where would that leave Roberta Fenn?”

  “To hell with Roberta Fenn. I’m thinking about us.’

  “Think some more about us then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I said, “We’re given a deck of marked cards. We’re supposed to put them into the game-very innocently. All right, we put them into the game, collect our stipend, and that’s all. But suppose we take the marked deck of cards, slip them into our pocket, forget to put them into the game, and a big jackpot is coming up?

  Then what?”

  She gloated over me rapturously. “And I thought you were dumb about money matters!” For a moment I thought she was going to kiss me.

  I got up and moved over toward the door.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  I said, “I want you to sit in your office and not know where I am. If Hale telephones, I’ve disappeared, too.” Bertha frowned. “I’d have to lie to him, wouldn’t I?”

  “You would now,” I said. “If you hadn’t been so smart about tracing telephone calls and hunting me up, you could have told him the truth-that you didn’t know where I was.”

  “What are we going to do about that?” Bertha Cool asked.

  I said, “When he rings up tonight, tell him you don’t know where I am.”

  “You mean you want me to lie to him?”

  I smiled at her and said, “No.”

  Bertha said, “What are you getting at?”

  I said, “I want you to tell him the truth.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  I held the door open for her. “By tonight,” I told her, “you won’t know where I am.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I CAUGHT UP on sleep for the biggest part of the afternoon. About six o’clock I tapped on the communicating door to Roberta’s room.

  “Yes,” she called, “what is it?”

  1 opened the door a crack. “Getting hungry?”

  “Come on in.” She had a sheet pulled up over her. From the clothes on the chair, it looked as though the sheet was about all she had on.

  She grinned, said—, “This is my negligee. Donald, I’ve simply got to get some clothes. I’ve been using a purse as a suitcase and overnight bag until I feel like something the cat dragged in. The drugstore downstairs managed to give me enough creams, comb, brushes, and toilet articles, but no negligee.”

  I said, “I could use some clean clothes, but it’s Sunday and the stores are closed.”

  “You live here, don’t you? You must have a room with a lot of things in it.”

  “I have.”

  “Why don’t you go get them?”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “You think-that the police—”

  “Yes.”

  “Donald, I’m sorry. I’m the one that got you into this mess.”

  “No, you didn’t. It isn’t any mess, and I’m not in it.

  I like the clothes I’ve got on.”

  She smiled. “Where would we go?”

  “Oh, there are half a dozen places where we could get something to eat and perhaps do a little dancing.”

  “Donald, I’d love that.”

  “Okay, get your things on.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ve washed out my undies and left them hanging in the bathroom. I think they’re dry.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Be seeing you.”

  I went back and closed the door, settled down and lit a cigarette. Fifteen minutes later she joined me, and thirty minutes after that we were seated in one of the less exclusive nightclubs with cocktails in front of us, and a special de luxe dinner ordered.

  Getting a girl drunk is always a risky business. You don’t know what she’s going to do or what she’s going to say when the cautiousness wears off and she gets right down to the real low-down. What’s more, you never know whether you’re not going to wake up with a terrific headache and find your victim has drunk you under the table.

  I suggested a second cocktail. Roberta took it. She turned me down on a third, but admitted that some wine would go nicely with the dinner.

  I ordered sparkling Burgundy.

  It was a place where people came to dine and talk, laugh, proposition, and be propositioned. Waiters made quite a show of bustling about, but didn’t try to serve the dinners under an hour or an hour and a half.

  Our dinner dragged into its second bottle of sparkling Burgundy, and I could see Roberta was getting tight. I was feeling pretty darn good myself.

  “You never have told me what your partner said to you.”

  “Bertha?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was because your delicate ears shouldn’t hear such language.”

  “You’d be surprised at the things my delicate ears have heard. What’s eating her?”

  “Oh, just a general gripe.”

  She reached across the table. Her fingers closed around my hand. “You’re protecting me, aren’t you, Donald?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I knew you were. Your partner wanted you to find me and turn me in and you wouldn’t do it. You had a fight about it. Isn’t that right?”

  “Listening at the door?” I asked.

  Her eyes showed indignation. “Certainly not.”

  “Just general powers of deduction?”

  She nodded slowly, with that serious solemnity which characterizes a woman who is saying to herself, Now I’m pretty tight, hut no one must know it. I’m going to nod my head, and I must be careful to see that it doesn’t nod too far and fall right off in my lap.

  I said, “Bertha’s all right now. You can forget about her. She was a little belligerent at first, but that doesn’t mean anything—not with Bertha. She’s like the camel, very even-tempered.”

  “Donald, suppose that had been the police. What could we have done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Suppose they pick me up. What am I to do?’

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. Don’t talk. Don’t make any statements. Don’t give them any information about anything until you’ve seen a lawyer.”

  “What lawyer?”

  “I’ll get you one.”

  “You’re so good to me.”

  Her words were getting just a little thick. There was an effort in the concentration of her gaze, as if she wanted to be certain to hold me in one place so that I didn’t drift out of her field of vision right while she was looking at me.

  “Know something?” she asked abruptly.

  “What?”

  “I’m nuts about you.”

  “Forget it. You’re cockeyed.”

  “I’m tight all right, but I’m still nuts about you. Didn’t you know it back there in the hotel when I kissed you?”

  “No, I didn’t think anything about it.”

  Her eyes were large. “You should think something about it.”

  I leaned across the table, pushed the plates away to make a clear spot on the tablecloth. “Why did you leave Los Angeles?”

  “Don’t make me talk about it.”

  “I want to know.”

  The question seemed to sober her. She looked down at her plate, thought for a moment, said, “I could use a cigarette.”

  I gave her one and lit it.

  “I’ll tell you, if you make me, Donald, but I don t want to. You could make me do anything.”

  “I want to know, Rob.”

  “It was years ago, 1937.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was out with a man in an automobile. We drove around just killing time, and then turned in to one of the parks, and—stopped.”

  “Necking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “At that time they were having quite a bit of trouble with a love bandit, a chap who lay in wait in the places where the necking parties went on. I suppose you know the procedure.”

  “Holdup?”

  “He’d take money from the men, and then—well, then he’d borrow the woman for a while.”

  “Go on.”

  “We were held up.”

  “What happened?”

  “This man made a pass at me and my escort wouldn’t stand for it. The bandit shot him—and got away.”

  “Were you suspected?”

  “Suspected of what?” she asked, her eyes getting wide.

  “Of having had anything to do with it.”

  “Good heavens, no. Everyone was just as sympathetic and nice to me as they could be. But—well, it clung to me. Of course, the people where I was working knew all about it. They’d keep talking about it. Once when I went out with a fellow one of the girls in the office didn’t like she came to me and told me that a man had given his life in order to protect my honor, that I shouldn’t hold it cheaply.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I wanted to slap her face. All I could do was to smile and thank her.

  “I quit my job, went to work in another place. In about two months they found out all about me. It was the same thing over and over. I suppose I’m just a damn heathen. I didn’t love this man. I liked him. I was going with him off and on, but I was also going with some others. I had no intention of marrying him. If I’d known what he was going to do, I’d have stopped him. I didn’t want him to give his life for me. It was a brave thing to do. It was a wonderful thing to do. It was so-so damned quixotic.”

  “I think it was what any man would have done under similar circumstances.”

  She smiled. “Statistics prove that you’re wrong.” I knew she was right, so didn’t say anything more. “Well,” she went on, “what with having all of my friends whispering around behind my back, and what with the memory of the tragedy gnawing at the back of my consciousness-I decided to travel. I went to New York. After a while I got a job as a model, advertising some lingerie. For a while things were all right, then people recognized my photographs. My friends started whispering again.

  “I’d had a taste of complete freedom. It had lasted for almost a year. I knew what it was like to be just a common, average person, free to live my own life in my own way—”

  “So you disappeared again?” I asked.

  “Yes. I realized that I’d had the right idea but had made the mistake of getting into a profession where I was photographed. I decided to go to a new place, begin all over again, and smash the first camera that was pointed in my direction.”

  “New Orleans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “You know the rest.”

  “How did you meet Edna Cutler?”

  “I don’t know now just how it was. I think it started in a cafeteria or a restaurant-it may have been the Bourbon House. Come to think of it, I guess it was.

  That’s something of a Bohemian place, you know. Most of the people who eat there regularly get to know the other people who eat there regularly. Quite a few of the prominent authors, playwrights, and actors eat there when in New Orleans. It’s an unpretentious little place, but it has the atmosphere, the real, authentic, aged-in-the-wood brand.”

 

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