“Do what?”
“Walk out on Bertha in a huff.”
“I had work to do,” I said. “I went out and did it. There’d been too much delay as it was. After this, when a telegram comes in collect, addressed to me, pay for it.”
“I will, Donald,” she said. “Bertha was in an awful temper. Some little thing had gone wrong and thrown her all out of balance.”
“Did you,” I asked, “ring me up long distance to tell me about your temper?”
“No, lover. I wanted to tell you that you were right.”
“What about?”
“About Dr. Lintig. I’ve just checked back through the records of the medical board. It took me a little while to get the right line into their office, but I did it.”
“What,” I asked, “did you find out?”
“In 1919,” she said, “Dr. Lintig filed a certificate showing that he had changed his name to Charles Loring Alftmont. So they changed their records accordingly, and he’s now practicing at Santa Carlotta — eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist.”
I said, “That’s fine — only you still haven’t told me what you called up about.”
Her voice was sugar-coated. “Listen, Donald, Bertha needs you.”
“What happened?” I asked.
She said, “In a way, Donald, it’s your fault.”
“What is?”
“We’re fired.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Smith sent me a registered letter. He told me that our instructions were to find Mrs. Lintig, not to bother about Dr. Lintig, that he was very much put out at our failure to follow instructions, and that we weren’t to proceed any farther with the case.”
After a while, when I said nothing, she said, “Hello, Donald. Are you there?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m thinking.”
That got action with Bertha. She said, “Well, for Pete’s sake, don’t think over the long-distance telephone.”
“I’ll see you some time tomorrow,” I said, and hung up, while she was still trying to talk.
I sat and thought for the space of a couple of cigarettes, then I picked up the telephone and said, “Connect me with Mrs. Lintig’s room, will you please?”
The clerk said, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Lam, but she’s checked out. She received a telegram and said she had to leave at once.”
“Did she leave any forwarding address?”
“No.”
“How did she leave, on the train?”
“No. She hired a car — said something about being driven to the nearest place where she could charter a plane.”
I said, “Just a minute. I’m coming down. I want to talk with you.”
I threw my things into my bag, went down to the lobby, and said, “I have to leave — urgent business. Please make out my bill at once. Now, Mrs. Lintig had some spectacles ordered.”
“Yes,” the clerk said, “a most unfortunate accident. The hotel agreed to assume responsibility, although I’m not entirely certain we were to blame.”
“When those glasses come,” I said, “forward them to me at this address.”
I scribbled my address on the back of a card. “They may come C.O.D.,” I said, “or they may be prepaid. In any event, just forward them to me. If there’s a C.O.D., I’ll take it up and relieve the hotel of responsibility. I’m related to Mrs. Lintig. She’s my aunt — but please don’t say anything about it — she’s very sensitive, and she used to live here, you know. There was a divorce. I’ll pay for the glasses.”
“Yes, Mr. Lam. That’s very nice of you.”
I loaded my hag into the agency car and started out for Santa Carlotta.
Chapter Four
It was exactly nine-five a.m. when I entered the office of Dr. Charles Alftmont. A nurse who radiated hatchet-Faced efficiency asked me my name, address, and occupation. I told her I was a travelling man who had developed some eye trouble, and the heavy dark glasses which I was wearing bore out my statement. I gave her a fictitious name and address and told her I wanted to see Dr. Alftmont at once.
She said, “Just a minute,” and went through a door into the inner office. A few minutes later, she popped out and said, “This way, please. Dr. Alftmont will see you now.”
I followed her in through an eye-testing room to where Dr. Alftmont sat behind a desk in a private office that radiated an atmosphere of quiet prosperity.
He looked up. He was Mr. Smith, our client.
Seen without his dark glasses, his eyes matched the rest of his face, a keen, incisive, hard grey. He said, “Good morning. What can I do for you?”
The nurse was hovering around, and I said, in a low voice, “I’ve been having a lot of eye trouble, doing quite a bit of night driving.”
“Where,” he asked, “did you get those dark glasses?”
I said, “They’re just a cheap pair I picked up in the drugstore. I’ve been driving all night. The daylight hurts my eyes.”
“Worst thing you can do,” he said, “driving all night. You’re young yet. Some day you’ll pay for it. Your eyes weren’t intended to stand any such strain. Come into the other room.”
I followed him into the other room. The nurse adjusted me in the chair. Dr. Alftmont nodded to her, and she went out.
“Now, just slip off those glasses,” the doctor said, “and we’ll have a look.”
He wheeled a machine with a big lens and a shield in it up in front of my face. He said, “Rest your chin on this strap. Look directly at this point of light. Hold your eyes steady.”
He took up a position behind the machine. I slipped off the glasses. He turned various attachments. Lights appeared on each side of the big disc. He spun them slowly, and said, “Now, let’s have a look at the other eye,” and swivelled the lens over towards my left eye, and went through the process all over again. He made some notes on a pad of paper which he held in his hard and said, “There s considerable irritation apparently, but I see no serious defect in vision. I can’t understand why your eyes have been bothering you. Perhaps it’s just a momentary muscular fatigue. There’s a bruise over the right eye, but the eye itself seems not to have been damaged.”
He swung the machine to one side, and said, “Now we’ll take a look—” For the first time he got a good look at my face. He stopped in mid-sentence and stared at me with sagging jaw.
I said, “Your wife was in Oakview yesterday, Doctor.”
He sat looking at me for the space of ten seconds, then he said in that calm, precise voice of his, “Ah, Mr. Lam. I should have seen through your little ruse. Are you at the— Come into my private office.”
I got up out of the chair and followed him into his private office. He closed and locked the door. “I should have expected this,” he said.
I sat down and waited.
He paced the floor nervously. After a moment, he said, “How much?”
“For what?” I asked.
“You know,” he said. “What’s your price?”
“You mean for services rendered?”
“Call it anything you want,” he said irritably. “Let me know how much it is. I should have known better. I’d heard all private detective agencies resorted to blackmail when the opportunity resented.”
“Well, you heard wrong,” I said. “We try to give a loyal service to our clients — when our clients will let us.”
“Nonsense. I know better. You had no business trying to get in touch with me. I told you specifically that I wanted you to find Mrs. Lintig, to make no effort to locate Dr. Lintig.”
“You didn’t put it exactly that way, Doctor.”
“That was the effect of it. All right, you’ve found me. Let’s quit beating about the bush. How much do you want?”