Down underneath, in firm, angular strokes, appeared the one thing which, so far as Bertha was concerned, terminated the interview: ‘Received cheque, $200.00.’
It was all written on three sheets of legal foolscap which Bertha had clipped together and pushed under the blotter of her desk, intending later on to dictate a memo to go into the case-history file, but since the client had come in just before noon on Saturday, Bertha hadn’t had a chance to get at the dictation.
That was where I’d taken over. Bertha had called me in and I’d staked out at 226 Korreander, a well-designed but small stucco house.
I’d waited out there and the subject had come in exactly on the dot, just as specified, smoking a cigarette in a holder, wearing a double-breasted, well tailored grey suit with blue stripes. He’d remained for approximately an hour and ten minutes.
I’d tagged along behind when he left, keeping in the blind spot where his rear-view mirror couldn’t pick me up, noting the licence number of the car he was driving, watching the traffic, dropping as far behind as possible when I knew I couldn’t lose him, then crowding up close on him. He hadn’t given the slightest indication of being interested in anything that was going on behind him.
Yet the man had checked out of the hotel that night after I’d tailed him there. He must have been smarter than I thought, must have known he was being followed. I couldn’t figure out any other answer at the moment, and that answer bothered me, was bad for my self-respect — that which Bertha would have referred to as my damned conceit. I had always flattered myself on being able to tell when a subject knew he was being followed.
I made up my mind I’d be a lot more cautious with Mr. Thomas Durham in the future — in the event there was going to be any future.
It was typical of Bertha’s memo that she had boosted the price a hundred dollars while she’d been talking with the client, and a clinical record of Bertha’s mental processes was preserved on those sheets of legal foolscap, but she hadn’t even bothered to find out whether the client had a telephone, or anything about the client’s history. She’d received two hundred dollars, and that was that.
I looked under the name of Bushnell in the telephone directory and couldn’t find anything. I got hold of Enquiries, and Enquiries either couldn’t or wouldn’t help me, so I went down to the garage and got out our old agency car ‘Number Two.’
Agency ‘Number One’ was a new job and Bertha usually managed to use that on her business. Agency ‘Number Two’ was a nondescript, stout-hearted little old crock that had rubbed dents in its wings being loyal to the agency business. For over a hundred thousand miles it had trailed other cars, shadowed married men who were explaining to cuties that their wives didn’t understand them, worn out tyres digging up witnesses and chasing down clues in an assortment of murder cases.