Ashbury took my arm. “All right,” he said. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Downstairs in my car.”

“It might be a good plan to travel,” Bertha Cool said to me.

“I’ve thought of that. Where’s the agency car?”

“In the garage.”

“See you later,” I said.

“When can I have Elsie back?”

“I don’t know.”

Bertha Cool struggled with her temper, and Ashbury took my arm, led me across the office, and down to a parking station where he’d left his big sedan. “All right,” he said, “we talk here.”