At the Sal Sagev Hotel, Bertha Cool inscribed her scrawl on the register. The man said, “That’s interesting. I’m to meet the representative of a man by the name of Cool.”
Bertha looked at him. “You’re Whitewater?” she asked suddenly.
“Whitewell,” I amended.
He stared in surprise. “But — but — I—” He turned to me. “Are you Lam?”
I nodded.
“Don’t tell me that B. Cool is a woman.”
Bertha said, “I run the agency under the name of B. Cool because it saves a lot of explanation.”
Whitewell said, “Let’s go upstairs and talk. Your room, Mrs. Cool?”
“Yes,” she said, “in ten minutes.”
His room was a floor below our rooms. After he’d left the elevator, Bertha said, “He’s nice.”
“Uh huh.”
“Refined — sort of distinguished looking.”
“Uh huh. Aren’t you going to eat that chocolate bar?”
“Not now, lover. I have a little headache. I’ll save it. Run along to your room, but be sure you’re back in ten minutes. I don’t want to keep Mr. Whitewell waiting.”
“I’ll be there.”
I washed up, and got to the door of Bertha’s room in exactly nine and one-half minutes. Whitewell came down the corridor just as I knocked.
Bertha let us in. She smelled of hand lotion and toilet water. “Come right in, Mr. Whitewell,” she said. “Come right in and make yourself comfortable. Donald, sit over there in that chair.”
We sat down. Whitewell glanced quizzically at me, and said, “He isn’t exactly the type I’d expected.”
Bertha dragged a coy smile out of moth balls, draped it over her face, and said, in a voice that sounded kittenish, “And I surprised you, too, didn’t I?”
“Very much. I simply can’t picture a dainty, refined woman in such a business. Don’t you find it sordid?”
“Oh, not at all,” Bertha said in stilted tones of mealymouthed politeness. “It’s really very interesting. Of course, Donald takes over the sordid part. What was it you wanted us to do?”
“I want you to find a young woman.”
“Donald’s good at that. He just finished one of those cases.”
“Well, this is a little different.”
Bertha asked cautiously, “Are you her father?”
“No. I’m the father of a young man who is very much concerned — too much concerned, in fact.”
We waited for him to go on. He crossed his knees, clipped the end off a cigar, and asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
“Oh, please do,” Bertha said. “I like to see a man smoke a cigar. It’s so thoroughly masculine.”
He lit the cigar, carefully dropped the match into a tray, and said, “I have an only son, Philip. I run an advertising agency. Philip is coming in with me. I’m going to incorporate the business. I intended to give Philip a half interest as his wedding present.”
“That’s nice.”
“You see, he didn’t care much about settling down in an office. Perhaps I’ve been too indulgent. But when he fell in love, it changed all that. He was simply crazy over this young woman. She worked as secretary to one of the officials in an airplane factory and is strong for work and self-reliance. She imbued Philip with her ideas, and he suddenly decided he wanted to take his coat off and dig in. It was a miraculous transformation.”
“Must have made you feel pretty good.”
“It did — in a way — but—”
“Didn’t you want him to marry her?”
“At first, I didn’t want him to marry anyone until he’d become settled in a career. He’s twenty-eight, and has never done anything except play and travel. I could never get him interested in hard routine work.”
“I see. What’s happened to the woman?”
“Two days before the wedding, on the tenth, to be exact, she disappeared.”
“Leave any notes or anything?”
“Not a thing. She simply vanished into thin air, and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“If you didn’t want him to get married, why not let it go at that?” Bertha asked. “She had some reason for leaving. It’s probably something that would make her — well, even less desirable as a daughter-in-law.”
Whitewell made a little gesture with his hand. “I’ve thought of all that.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Philip. I told you she’d completely changed him. Frankly, I’m opposed to the match. But the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are such that I simply have to find her — for Philip’s sake if for nothing else. Philip isn’t sleeping; he isn’t eating. He’s going around in a half daze, losing weight, and looking like the devil.”
Bertha said, “All right, Donald will find her.”
He turned to me.
“Tell me all you know,” I said.
“As I’ve said, Corla was employed as secretary to one of the executives in the Randolf Aircraft Company. She lived with another girl in an apartment. On the day of her disappearance, she seemed moody and distraught. The girl with whom she was living tried to find out what was the matter. Corla said everything was all right.
“About ten minutes past eight, on the morning of the tenth, she started for work. She showed up on the job. Her employer said she seemed the same as usual, except she was very quiet. She’d already given notice that she was going to leave as soon as they could find someone to take her place. She and Philip were going to defer their honeymoon until later. Corla was exceedingly efficient as a secretary, and her employer had tried on several occasions to get her to remain on the job. I’m mentioning this because I want you to understand how thoroughly conscientious she was in regard to her work. Even if something had happened to make her take a run-out on Philip, she wouldn’t have left her employer in the lurch.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said.
“She took dictation until about ten o’clock, then she started transcribing. Among the letters she had taken was a very important and confidential communication, dealing with a new model plane. Also there were some interoffice memos which were important and confidential.
“Her boss stepped out of the office after he’d finished his dictation to have a brief conference with one of the other executives. The conference lasted about twenty minutes. When he returned, he noticed that Corla was not at her desk. A sheet of paper was in the typewriter. She’d started to write the first letter, but had only transcribed a few words. She’d stopped typing in the middle of a sentence.
“Her employer thought she’d gone to the restroom. He went on into his office, sat down at his desk, and started work. About fifteen minutes later, he thought of another Letter that had to go out, and pressed the buzzer for Corla. When she didn’t show up, he went out to the outer office and found things just as they were when he had come in.
“About ten or fifteen minutes later, he summoned one of the other secretaries and sent her into the restroom to see if Corla was ill. Corla wasn’t there. They’ve never found a trace of her from that time on. Her handbag was lying on her desk. There were fifty-odd dollars in it in currency, every cent the girl had in the world. She didn’t have a bank account. Her lipstick, powder, rouge, keys, everything, were in that bag.”
“The police were notified?” I asked.
“Yes. They didn’t do anything.”
“Any clues?”
“Only one.”
“What is it?”
“According to her roommate, Corla had been feeling radiantly happy up until twenty-four hours before her disappearance. I have, therefore, tried to find out something about what happened in that last twenty-four hours. The only thing that I can find that’s at all unusual is that the morning prior to her disappearance she received a letter. Now, that letter was from someone named Framley in Las Vegas, Nevada.”