“Oh, selling!” I exclaimed, and shook my head. “That’s terrible! The writing’s easy. You just go ahead and write the stuff. But trying to sell it, that’s where the rub comes.”
She laughed then and said, “You do think of the most humorous things, Mr. Lam. Won’t you sit down and talk with me a little longer?”
“I hate to presume on…”
“Well, after all, it’s Sunday and I’m here alone, and — of course, I don’t want to take up your time.”
“Not at all,” I told her. “It’s a pleasure — I’ll bet there’d be some red faces on the adjusters in that insurance company if I should uncover some new witness who would show that the accident absolutely was the fault of the other side, I think the insurance company knows what I’m doing and resents it, and are going to try to pin something on me so I can’t go ahead.”
“Well, I like that! Don’t you let them do it!”
I said diffidently, “I started to call on you yesterday, and then got frightened away.” I smiled, and then let my smile grow into a laugh of polite deprecation for my own timidity.
“You were frightened away?”
“Yes.”
“What frightened you?”
“A young, well-dressed chap I thought was a detective.”
“Why, whatever happened, Mr. Lam?”
I said, “He was tall and was wearing a grey double-breasted suit and was smoking a cigarette. He got out of his car at just about the same time I did, and looked me over. Then he walked past me and came up the steps and rang the bell here at the house. I drove around the block and parked where I could watch his car. I waited for him to come out. I thought — well, I felt sure that he was a detective working for the insurance company and checking up on me. I almost passed you up. But your case was exactly typical of the cases I wanted to investigate, so I decided to make another try.”
“He wasn’t a detective,” she said, “surely he wasn’t a detective. He’s — why, he’s a nice young man, just the same as you are.”
I laughed and said, “Well, that’s a load off my mind. He’s a friend, then. You’ve known him for a while?”
“Not too long.”
I waited.
She said, “He’s nice. A nice young man.”
I said, “He looked like a detective to me.”
She frowned.
“How did you meet him?” I asked.
She said, “Well, you might call it accidentally. He’s a rich chap, has an interest in some mining properties, so he doesn’t have to work. He’s what you’d call a play-boy, I guess, although what a man like that can see in me is more than I can tell.”
She simpered.
“He can see what I can see, can’t he?”
“Mr. Lam! You forget my age. The man can’t be over… well, he’s a lot younger than I am.”
“I’ll bet he’s older.”
“Why, Mr. Lam! How you talk!”
“You know I’m right.”
She tried to look demure. “Why, such an idea never occurred to me. Mr. Durham was just trying to be nice to me…”
I smiled knowingly.
She looked as satisfied as a bird preening its feathers.
I said, “Well, I’m sorry. I hope you’ll pardon me.”
“For what?”
“For getting so personal.”
She said archly, “Women like men who get personal.”
“Do they?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I... I guess I just never stopped to think of it.”
“Well, that’s what they want,” she said. “Remember it.”
“I will.”
She looked at me somewhat wistfully. “Will you be back?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll have to come back several times. I’ll make an investigation and then I’ll have to come back and ask you some more questions.”
“I wish you would. I’d like to do something about that insurance company.”
I got to my feet. She raised her voice and called, “Susie.”
The maid popped into the room with suspicious alacrity.
“Mr. Lam’s leaving,” she said. “He’ll be back from time to time. I’ll see him any time he comes, Susie, any time.”
The woman merely nodded her head.
She stood to one side in the passageway, and I walked out ahead of her.
I unhooked the screen door and opened it. She stood in the doorway.
“Good-bye, Susie,” I said, and smiled.
She glared at me and said, “You’ve fooled her. That doesn’t mean you’ve fooled me,” and slammed the front door hard.
I thought that over while I was walking across the street to where I’d left the agency car. I’d parked off the pavement, on the side of the road, and when I noticed the tracks of flat-heeled, feminine shoes around the licence number, I was glad that we took the precaution of keeping the car registered in the name of a dummy.
Six
I drove the agency car to the parking space we rented by the month, got out, locked the bus and started towards the building where our office was located.
I saw a flicker of motion from across the street, there a big police car came out of a parking lot, driving fast. Sergeant Frank Sellers of Homicide grinned from behind the wheel and said, “Hi, Master Mind!”
“Hi, yourself,” I told him. “What’s on your mind?”
He said, “I just wanted to talk with you. You’re a hard guy to catch. Bertha told me you were out working on a case.”
“That’s right, I am.”
“What case?”
“Don’t be silly. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“You’d have to if I asked the questions in the right way.”
“Well, that wasn’t the right way.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for two or three hours, Lam. You must have started out pretty early this morning.”
“Early is a relative word,” I said, “depending on whether you’re working for Bertha Cool or the taxpayers.”
He didn’t see the humour of that. He pulled the catch and pushed the door open. “Get in.”
“Where are we going?”
“Places.”
“For what?”
“Never mind. Get in.”
I got in. He slammed the door shut and poured speed into the car.
“Can’t you tell me where we’re going?” I asked.
“Not now. I don’t want to question you, and I don’t want any statements from you until I’m sure of my ground. When I’m sure of it, I’m going to give you a chance to come clean.”
I settled back against the cushions and yawned.
Sergeant Sellers turned on the siren, and we really started making time through the frozen traffic.
“Must be an emergency,” I said.
He grinned. “I just hate to plod along behind a stream of Sunday drivers. It does them good to hear a siren once in a while. Makes ’em get over. They — damn the guy!”
Sellers whipped the car into a skid, barely avoided a chap who had swung out, trying to pass another car.
Having missed the collision, Sellers slammed on his brakes and we skidded to a stop when a road patrol car flashed out of line and the man at the wheel shouted, “I’ll get him!”
“Throw the book at him!” Sellers yelled. “Give him the works on five counts.”
The officer nodded.
Sellers stepped on the throttle once more, saying, “Guys like that should be locked up and kept locked up.”
“That’s right,” I told him. “Here you are tearing out on a matter of life and death and…”
He flashed me a sidelong glance. “Better save your sarcasm. You may need it later on.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll save it. I probably will need it.”