“Did the district attorney tell you where you were to stay?”
“No. He said to report at ten o’clock in the morning.”
I said, “Look here. I want to keep in touch with you. I don’t want to have you hunting me up or running to the agency office, and I don’t want to be going to your hotel. Let’s go to my rooming-house. I’ll tell the landlady you’re related to me, and ask her to give you a room. I think she has a vacancy. In that way, I can see you once in a while without arousing suspicion.”
“Donald, I think that would be swell.”
“It’s not like a hotel,” I said. “It’s just a rooming-house, and—”
“I know,” she said.
I said, “We’ll go up right after dinner. I have some work to do, and I’ll get you settled first.”
“But I thought you didn’t have to work. I thought Mrs. Cool said—”
“She doesn’t care when I work,” I said, “or when I sleep. All she wants is results. If I can get them in twenty-three hours a day, she doesn’t object to my doing anything I damn please with the extra hour.”
She laughed, then abruptly quit laughing and stared steadily at me. “Donald,” she said, “are you working for the man who came out of that apartment?”