I said, “I keep going back to this Tom Durham case because I’m not entirely certain that my waiting in that hotel was purely the result of an accident.”
“What do you mean, an accident?” Bertha said, and then added parenthetically, “Damn that guy, if he doesn’t get his headlights down. Here, you mug, take that and that and that!”
Bertha angrily clicked the foot switch which sent the lights on the agency automobile bouncing up and down.
The other driver never did lower his lights, and Bertha Cool rolled down the left-hand window. As he swept on past, she shouted epithets at the top of her lungs, then rolled the window up. “What are you beating around the bush for?” she asked.
I said, “I was sitting in this hotel when a girl who said her name was Lucille Hart showed up. She pretended to have been driving an automobile which she said belonged to her sister, but which was registered in the name of her brother-in-law, apparently a chap who wants to be important in the family.”
“Husbands always want to be important,” Bertha said. “What happened?”
“When we walked out of the last joint, where we’d had drinks and dinner, the car very fortuitously was parked only a block away.”
Bertha grunted.
“And shortly before that she’d gone by-by and been out of the picture for twenty minutes.”
I saw Bertha was getting ready to explode so I hurried on: “One thing led to another and…”