“My God,” Bertha told me, “I know the facts of life. You don’t start picking up women in hotel lobbies and restaurants. Well, damn it, yes, that’s where you start, but the start’s always the same. So’s the finish, as far as that’s concerned. Tell me what the hell happened in the middle.”
I said, “We went along this road, I was going home with her and then her brother-in-law was going to take us back to town, then drive the car back again.”
“Humph!” Bertha snorted.
I said, “She had been drinking a lot of ginger ale. She said she was ill and wanted to find a rest-room. She told me to stop the car because she couldn’t go any farther. It was right near an auto court.”
Bertha slowed the car long enough to look at me pityingly. “For God’s sake,” she said, “what does a girl have to do with you? Hit you over the head with something?”
I said, “I got a cabin and by that time she thought she needed air. She walked out and I never saw her again.”
Bertha said, “You’re the one that needed the air! She gave it to you. I’ve told you a dozen times, Donald, that women go nuts over you, but you can’t keep turning them down the way you do. You get some jane all worked up and then wind up by being a perfect little gentleman. My God, I’ll bet she was sore at you. It’s a wonder she didn’t take a wrench out of the car and club you over the head. Why didn’t you take the car — or did she take it?”
I said, “It was all locked up. The last I saw of her, she had the keys. I have a very strong suspicion she may have telephoned the police, stating that the car was stolen and asking them to be on the lookout for it. I’m not at all certain but what I was roped in as a fall guy or something, and it bothers me.”
“Well,” Bertha said, “we’re trying to run a detective agency. God knows, it’s bad enough when I have to go around at night playing taxicab for you. I can’t lose sleep listening to all your wenching troubles, and I can’t go along to hold the script and read your lines for you. Next time take your own car, or carry a walkie-talkie so that when she makes you walk home, you can at least call a taxicab.”
I said, “I didn’t think I wanted a taxicab. I didn’t think it was advisable for me to be seen out there. Just as I was ready to leave the auto court, I heard a sound very much like the back-firing of a truck.”