He shook his head. “I don’t know a thing about it,” he protested.
“Wait a minute, Colonel,” I said. “Maybe I can jog your memory.”
I took him carefully through the whole story, and he sat there, his lunch forgotten. When I had finished with the death of Blondie, and how Mardi and I had quietly slipped away to Santa Monica, he sat back and gently blew his cheeks out. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s some yam. I can’t see where I come in, for all that.”
This is where it was going to be a little tricky. “You remember when the newspaper boys had you bottled up at the lodge with a girl friend, Colonel?” I said.
He frowned. “Now I don’t want to go into that,” he said abruptly.
“The girl friend was the woman on the telephone,” I told him quietly. “I want to know who she was.”
He shook his head. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“I’m givin’ you this straight. I heard her voice, and that was enough for me. I’d know that voice anywhere.”
“I can’t discuss this any further, Nick. I’m sorry.”
I said, “Listen, Colonel. I’ve got a right to know. That dame might have caused me a lotta grief. The trial’s over, and the whole thing’s washed up. You know me well enough to know that I won’t use any information you give me. It’s just that it is an unsatisfactory ending— not knowing.”