“It doesn’t say so,” I said.
“Well, it might just as well say so. You say that a liberal reward will be paid to anyone who can give you information as to the present whereabouts of Mrs. James C. Lintig, who left Oakview in 1919, or, in the event she is dead, as to the names and residences of her legal heirs. That sounds to me as though you were one of these heir chasers — and that fits in with some of the other things.”
“What other things?” I asked.
He turned, focused his eyes on the cuspidor, streamed yellow liquid explosively. He said, “I asked you first.”
“The initial question,” I said, “of which you seem to have lost sight, was the cost of the ad.”
“Five bucks for three insertions.”
I gave him five dollars of Bertha Cool’s money, and asked for a receipt. He said, “Wait a minute,” and went back behind the partition. A minute later the brown-eyed girl came out, and said, “You wanted a receipt, Mr. Lam?”
“I did, and I do.”
She hesitated over the receipt, holding her pen over the date line, then looked up at me. “How was the Grotto?”
“Rotten,” I said. “Where’s the best place for dinner?”