Bertha snorted and said, “I know you were falling for her like a ton of bricks.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Bertha said, “You were right all the way along the line, lover. The manager of the cocktail lounge had a lease on an apartment in the hotel basement which had originally been made for the assistant porter. It went with his lease on the cocktail lounge. He was in on the blackmail racket.
“It looks as though Bob Elgin was mixed up in it too. You know the way it is around these night-clubs. There’s opportunity for some nice blackmail if the people want to do it. They didn’t want to take over the real dirty work, but Amelia Jasper did. That’s the way she’s been making her living for the past five years.
“It’s strange the way she happened to start on Minerva Carlton. It seems Claire Bushnell made some crack about the swell time the two girls had been having at the beach. She thought she was just entertaining her Aunt Amelia. Amelia urged her on, got all of the facts and…”
I said, “Did anybody confess? Did Sellers get a confession?”
“Did he get a confession!” Bertha said, with a glint of admiration in her eyes. “You should have seen that boy work! Him with only one good hand! But he pulled a piece of rubber hose and he scared the pants right off that crowd.”
“Who squawked?”
“Oddly enough,” Bertha said, “it was the man who weakened first.”
“Tom Durham?”