She stood to one side in the passageway, and I walked out ahead of her.
I unhooked the screen door and opened it. She stood in the doorway.
“Good-bye, Susie,” I said, and smiled.
She glared at me and said, “You’ve fooled her. That doesn’t mean you’ve fooled me,” and slammed the front door hard.
I thought that over while I was walking across the street to where I’d left the agency car. I’d parked off the pavement, on the side of the road, and when I noticed the tracks of flat-heeled, feminine shoes around the licence number, I was glad that we took the precaution of keeping the car registered in the name of a dummy.
Six
I drove the agency car to the parking space we rented by the month, got out, locked the bus and started towards the building where our office was located.
I saw a flicker of motion from across the street, there a big police car came out of a parking lot, driving fast. Sergeant Frank Sellers of Homicide grinned from behind the wheel and said, “Hi, Master Mind!”
“Hi, yourself,” I told him. “What’s on your mind?”
He said, “I just wanted to talk with you. You’re a hard guy to catch. Bertha told me you were out working on a case.”