Kept Women Can’t Quit

“I don’t know what your game is, but I have an idea it isn’t solving a homicide. Personally, I think you’re in this thing a lot deeper than you’re letting on and I think you’re sweating because you’ve taken a chance with fifty grand in hot dough and someone has outsmarted you.

“However, I’ll tell you one thing. You’ve got enough brains to make a lot of trouble for Sellers in case you decide to do so. We haven’t got enough of a case to pin a homicide on you, and if we try to detain you and you blow the whistle on Frank Sellers and say that he’s using you as a patsy to cover up, you can get lots of publicity up here because this isn’t Sellers’ hometown and the papers here like to throw mud on Los Angeles.

“For your confidential information, Sellers has left for the airport. He’s taking a plane back to Los Angeles. I think you’d better keep away from the airport until after Sellers gets started. Sellers is pretty much put out. I had to do quite a bit of talking before he was ready to listen.

“You understand?”

I nodded.

Inspector Hobart jerked his thumb to the door. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “And just remember a couple of things. One of them is that I have a homicide to solve; the other one is that you’re a private detective who has his own troubles — and those troubles could get worse.

“If you run onto any homicide evidence I want to know about it.”

“Where can I get you?” I asked.

He took a card out of his pocket, scribbled a couple of numbers on it and slid it across the table to me. “One of those numbers will get me any hour of the day or night,” he said.

“How anxious are you to get this thing cleaned up?”

“Just as anxious as any man could be for anything,” he said. “I’m so damned anxious that I stuck my neck out with Sergeant Sellers. I’m so damned anxious that I’m giving you a break when I have a feeling that I should take you across my knee and give you a good walloping in order to teach you that the police aren’t the damn fools you seem to think they are.

“Now then, does that answer your question?”

“It answers it,” I said.

I got up and started for the door.

“Wait a minute, Lam,” Inspector Hobart said, as I had a hand on the knob. “How do you feel about Sellers? Did those two slaps give you hard feelings?”

I looked at him and said, “Yes.”

“Going to make any difference in the way you co-operate with me?”

“No.”

“Going to make you try to get even with Sellers?”

“Not the way he thinks.”

Hobart grinned. “Go on. Get the hell out of here” he said.

Chapter 9

It was quarter to eleven by the time I reached Ernestine Hamilton’s apartment.

She must have been waiting within six feet of the door because I had no sooner pressed the button than the door was jerked open and Ernestine all but grabbed me into her arms.

“Donald!” she exclaimed, “I’m so glad... I was afraid you weren’t going to show up.”

“I was unavoidably detained,” I told her.

There were traces of tears in her eyes.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve been telling myself that for the last hour but... well, I got to thinking and wondering if perhaps you hadn’t handed me a line. You know, I must have seemed an awful ninny to you last night and I was afraid I’d disgusted you and...”

“Stop it,” I said.

“Stop what?”

“This business of running yourself down,” I said. “From now on, you’re going to think of yourself in an entirely different manner. Did you ask Bernie about—”

“I asked her about everything,” she said. “I told her to tell me everything in that hotel that looked the least bit unusual. And, believe me, I turned her inside out. Donald, you’d be absolutely surprised at the things that go on in a big hotel like that.

“Of course, the house detectives know some of it, but I don’t think they know as much as a good, smart telephone operator — and, of course, the house detectives don’t do anything about things unless they feel that a situation is something that’s apt to create a disturbance or hurt the good name of the hotel in some way, or... well, you know, give it a bad reputation.

“My gosh, Donald, we didn’t get to sleep until three o’clock this morning and Bernie is so tired she can hardly hold her head up. Believe me, I got all the dirt. There’s the married woman in 917 whose husband is away on a trip. There’s the girl who slipped into another room and then found she’d left her purse with her key in it. She’d locked her purse with her key in it, her driving license, all of her money, everything, in the man’s room.”

“Nothing that would help on this case?” I asked.

“I couldn’t find a thing. I just turned Bernie inside out about everything. It would take me an hour to tell you all of it. I made some notes and—”

“Let’s go down to the hotel,” I said. “Is there any chance of meeting Bernie?”

She shook her head. “Bernie’s on the switchboard right straight through. She takes her lunch.

“Donald, there’s one thing that might interest you and that’s the unclaimed brief case.”

“What about it?” I asked.