“Not for the service we give.”
“I understood a private detective—”
“You’re not hiring a detective, but an agency. Donald will be out on the firing line. I’ll be in the office, but very much on the job.”
“At that figure,” Whitewell said, “it seems to me you should guarantee results.”
Bertha’s eyes glittered into his. “What the hell do you take me for?” she asked.
He said, “There’s got to be some limit.”
Bertha said, “We’ll keep the expenses down.”
“How about expenses for entertainment?”
“There won’t be any. And we’ll want two hundred dollars in advance.”
Whitewell started making out his check. “If you can either find her or get proof that she left of her own free will within a week, I’ll give you a bonus of five hundred dollars. And if you can find her, I’ll make it an even thousand.”
Bertha looked across at me. “You get that, Donald?”
I nodded.
“Well, get out and start working. I may have been cooped up in a sanitarium for six months, but I don’t need any help to sign a receipt.”
Chapter Three
Purple shadows were creeping across the desert. The air was clear as gin, dry as a piece of new blotting paper. It was early spring, but none of the men wore coats, except an occasional tourist.
Las Vegas keeps to the traditions of western towns by having one main street which shoots the works. A few cash-and-carry grocers and businesses that people will search out hang on to the side streets. Two main districts branch out at each end of this main street: one of them a two-mile-long collection of tourist camps containing some of the best air-conditioned auto cabins in the country. At the other end, like the arm of a big Z, is the stretch of houses where women sit around — waiting.
The length of the main street is sprinkled with gambling-casinos, eating-places, hotels, drugstores, and saloons. Virtually every form of gambling runs wide open. The whir of roulette wheels and the peculiar rattling clatter of the wheels of fortune were distinctly audible on the side walk as I walked along, taking stock of the place.
After I’d soaked up a little atmosphere, I found a taxi cab, and gave the address which Whitewell had written out for me.
The house itself was rather small, but it was distinctive. Whoever had designed it had tried to break away from the conventional styling which characterized the other house on the street.
I paid off the cab, walked up three cement steps to porch, and rang the bell.
The young giant who came to the door had blond hair but his face was the color of saddle leather. He looked out at me from gray, sun-bleached eyes, said, “You’re Lam from Los Angeles,” and, at my nod, gripped my hand with lean, strong fingers.
“Come in. Arthur Whitewell telephoned about you.”
I followed him into the house. The smell of cooking came to my nostrils. “My day off,” he explained. “We’re having dinner at five. Come on in. Try that chair over by the window. It’s comfortable.”
It was comfortable. It was the only really comfortable chair in the room. The whole house was like that. Little economies paved the way for a splurge on one or two items that would count. The house didn’t hive the stamp of poverty, but it bore unmistakable evidences of persons who wanted better things, and would make every sacrifice to possess one or two objects that would be symbols of what they wanted.
Ogden Dearborne was lean as a log, but he moved with quick, easy grace. You could see his job was outdoors in the desert, and he was young enough to have a boyish pride in his deeply bronzed skin.
A door opened. A woman came in. I got up, and Ogden said, “Mother, may I present Mr. Lam of Los Angeles — the one Arthur Whitewell telephoned about.”
She came toward me, smiling graciously.
She was a woman who was still in the running. She’d taken care of her figure and her face. She might be in the late forties, perhaps in the early fifties, but she might have been in the thirties. She knew the pinch of self-denial, this woman. She didn’t eat everything she wanted and try to keep her figure by wrapping her body with elastic. She had kept her figure by self-discipline — by going hungry.
She was brunette with eyes that glittered like polished, black marble. Her nose was long and straight, and the nostrils were so thin they seemed almost transparent.
She said, “How do you do, Mr. Lam. Anything we can do for a friend of Arthur Whitewell will be a privilege. Won’t you make our house your headquarters while you’re in Las Vegas?”
It was one of those invitations that was a symbol. If I’d said yes, someone would have had to sleep on the back porch, I wasn’t expected to say yes. I said very gravely, “Thank you very much. I’ll probably be here only a few hours, and I’ll be busy. But I appreciate your invitation.”
The girl came in then. It was as though they’d been standing outside the door, timing their entrance, each one careful not to interfere with the impression the others would make.
Mrs. Dearborne went through the formula. “Eloise, I wish to present Mr. Lam of Los Angeles, the person Mr. Whitewell telephoned about.”
Eloise was unmistakably the daughter of her mother. She had the same long, straight nose. The nostrils weren’t quite as paper thin. Her hair was a deep auburn. Her eyes were blue, but there was the same hard leanness, the same purpose of living, the same impression of self-discipline. These women were hunters, and they had just that feline touch which the woman hunter always has. A cat, sprawling out in front of the warmth of a fireplace, looks as softly ornamental as the fur thrown about a woman’s throat. The padded feet move noiselessly, and softly. But the claws are there, and it’s because they’re kept sheathed, they’re so deadly dangerous. A dog doesn’t conceal his claws, and they’re only good for digging. A cat sheathes its claws, and they possess needlesharp efficiency in the problem of sustaining life by death.
“Won’t you sit down?” Mrs. Dearborne asked when I had muttered the conventional formula.
We all sat down.
You could see that whatever was discussed was going to be discussed jointly — not that they distrusted Ogden’s ability to report, but these people weren’t the kind to trust anyone else. They wanted firsthand information. They’d all come to attend the conference. They’d planned it that way.
I said, “I’ll only stay for a minute. I want to find out about Helen Framley.”
“I really know virtually nothing,” Ogden said.
“That’s good. Then you won’t have to skip over any of the details.”
He smiled. “Well, I went up—”
“I think, Ogden, Mr. Lam would like to have you begin at the beginning.”
“Yes,” Eloise said, “your call from Arthur Whitewell.”
He didn’t even bother to communicate his acceptance, simply adopted their suggestion as a matter of course, something that went without saying. “I received a call from Arthur Whitewell. He was calling from Los Angeles. We’ve known the family for some time. Eloise met Philip in Los Angeles a year ago. He’s called at the house several times. She’s been entertained in Los Angeles. Arthur, you know, is Philip’s father. He’s—” Ogden flashed a quick glance at his mother, evidently failed to get a go-ahead signal, so said instead, “He comes through here quite frequently and drops in to spend an evening.”
“What did he say over the telephone?” I asked.
“Said that a someone named Framley had sent a letter to Corla Burke. He wanted me to find this Framley and ask about what was in it. Said it had seemed to upset Miss Burke.
“I didn’t have anything whatever to work on. It took me half a day to locate this party. She’s living in an apartment, has only been here for two or three weeks. She said she didn’t know anything about it, that she didn’t know any Corla Burke, that she hadn’t sent any letter, and, therefore, couldn’t help me in the least.”