The man, from the first, seemed definitely interested in his fellow travelers. It was two blocks, however, before he said tentatively, “Cooled off rather suddenly, didn’t it?”
Carol Burbank smiled. “Yes, it did. But after all, one can expect that this time of year. It’s a little early for the warm weather to set in.”
“There certainly is a shortage of taxicabs,” the man observed.
“Yes, isn’t there.”
“Not that I object,” he said with a smile, “when it gives me a break like this. You girls from San Francisco?”
Carol looked inquiringly at Della Street. Della Street gave the man a somewhat vague smile and said simply, “No. I’ve been there, though.”
The man said, “I live there. Swell place. Have to come down here once in a while on business. Always anxious to get back. This place is just a mass of people. San Francisco is a city.”
“Watch out,” Carol Burbank warned, “they shoot people for saying things like that down here.”
“I can’t help it. I think San Francisco... Say, you girls don’t live here in Los Angeles, do you?”
Once more Carol looked to Della Street for guidance.
Della laughed. “What’s the matter, are you afraid to voice your opinion if we do?”
“Well, of course — I don’t want to seem discourteous.”
“Oh, I’m certain the residents of Los Angeles get accustomed to hearing people from San Francisco refer to Los Angeles in terms of disparagement. But don’t they have more sunshine here than they do in San Francisco? Don’t you have lots of fog?”
“Fog!” the man exclaimed. “Why that’s the thing that makes San Francisco. When that fog comes rolling in from the ocean, it peps you up. It’s bracing, stimulating. There’s a lot of rush and bustle in connection with San Francisco. Down here, people seem to have the hookworm. You girls really don’t live here, do you?”
“What makes you think we don’t?” Della said.
“Too much class — too much pep.”
“I thought Hollywood was noted for its beautiful women.”
“Oh, I guess it is, but they’re synthetic. You girls are metropolitan, you don’t act the way they do down here. You don’t wear your clothes that way. You have something about you — something...”
“An air of urban sophistication,” Carol Burbank finished.
The man said with some enthusiasm, “That’s it exactly.”
The girls laughed and, after a moment, the man joined them somewhat half-heartedly. “I’m kidding on the square,” he protested. “You’re stringing me along.”
The cab drew up in front of the Woodridge Hotel.
The man said somewhat ruefully, “I’m sorry your hotel wasn’t nearer Eleventh and Figueroa. Well, good-by.”
They smiled at him, paid the cab driver and Della Street led the way into the hotel.
“Good afternoon,” the clerk said and spun the rack containing the registration card around toward Della Street.
Della picked up the fountain pen, said in a low voice, “I’m from Mr. Mason’s office. I...”
“Oh yes. I have reservations all made. You’re Miss Street?”
“Yes.”
Della registered, said to Carol Burbank, “I’ll register for you. By the way, what’s your middle name?”
“Edith, but I seldom use it.”
“That’s all right,” Della said, and wrote the name C. E. Burbank on the register.
The clerk smacked his palm down on the call bell and called, “Front!”
Della Street slipped the addressed envelope out of her purse, placed it on the counter. “A message for Mr. Mason,” she said. “He may pick it up a little later. Will you...”
“I’ll be glad to see that he gets it. Will he call personally, or do you expect him to send a messenger? We...”
A man who had just entered the lobby walked rapidly toward the desk, cleared his throat importantly.
The clerk broke off to glance over Della Street’s shoulder, said, “Just a moment, I’m busy with these two young ladies. Boy, will you take these ladies to six-twenty-four and six-twenty-six? Open the communicating bath and...”
“Just a minute,” the man said.
Della Street didn’t like the tone of his voice. She turned apprehensively as a big hand pulled back the lapel of a coat. She saw a gold shield incrusted with a number, insignia and lettering. The affable stranger who had been so enthusiastic over the charms of San Francisco was neither affable nor friendly now. He pushed Della slightly to one side, and his big hand clamped down on the envelope the clerk was still holding in open-mouthed amazement.
Della Street said angrily, “Will you kindly explain the meaning of this?”
His eyes were steely, hard and watchful. He said in a tone that rasped with offensive authority, “You two girls have an appointment at Headquarters. The same cab you came in is waiting outside.” He turned to a plain-clothes man who had come up behind him. “Keep an eye on them, Mac, while I see what’s in this envelope.”
Mac moved close while the first officer pulled out the claim check. He gave the other a quick look at it, holding it in such a way that Carol Burbank couldn’t see what it was.
“Okay, Mac, I’ll get it. You take the girls to Headquarters. We’ll meet there.”
Carol Burbank said quite firmly, “I guess perhaps you people don’t know who I am. You just can’t do this to me.”
The man who had been so genial a few minutes before regarded her with unsmiling authority. “Don’t kid yourself we don’t know who you are, Miss Burbank. It’s because we know who you are that we’re doing this. Come on, get in the cab. Or do you want to ride in the wagon?” he asked as Carol held back.
“I want to call my lawyer,” Della Street announced with dignity.
“Sure, sure,” the man said soothingly, “but you can’t do it here. You don’t want the whole hotel to know your business, do you? Come on. There’s a phone at Headquarters. You’ll have all the time in the world to call him when you get there.”
“I want to call him from here,” Della said, starting toward the phone booths, “and I don’t care whether the whole world knows my business.”
The officer’s hand grasped her arm. He jerked her back, spun her around. “All right, if you have to do it the hard way,” he said. “This is a pinch.”
Chapter 14
The room at Police Headquarters had barred windows, held a clean, somewhat battered table, nearly a dozen chairs, three huge brass cuspidors on rubber mats, and nothing else. It was a plain room, obviously designed for just one purpose. It was devoid of ornament and cheer. People who were held in that room were like cattle herded into the killing pen of a stockyard. They simply waited until such time as the persons who controlled their destinies were ready to receive them.
Della Street and Carol Burbank sat over on the far side of the table near the window. Across the table from them, and between them and the door, the police officer who had been delegated to “keep an eye” on them, rested an elbow on the table, propped his feet on the rung of an adjacent chair, and gave the girls a view of the somewhat beefy profile of a man slightly past middle age.
The passing of years had made him indifferent to feminine beauty, and long association with the police had utterly calloused him to human misery. His manner indicated that he had detached himself from the scene of which he was a part. His body hulked between the prisoners and the door, which constituted a discharge of his duty. His mind was far away, occupied with the mathematical percentages of his prospects for winning on the races the next afternoon; daydreaming what he would do when he became eligible for pension; and rehashing in his mind an argument he had had with his wife that morning, thinking somewhat ruefully of her natural aptitude for delivering an extemporaneous tongue lashing, whereas he hadn’t thought of his best retorts until long afterward. His wife had a gift that way. No, damn it, she’d inherited it from her mother — that must be it. He remembered some of the scenes with his mother-in-law before she’d died some ten years ago. At that time, Mabel had been all worked up over the way the old lady used to have tantrums. That was before Mabel had got fat. She certainly had a good figure in those days. Well, come to think of it, he’d put on a little weight himself. Got pretty much out of shape after he quit that handball exercise. Thinking back on it, he couldn’t remember exactly when it was he’d quit. It had been after a spell of the flu, and then they’d changed his hours for a while, and...