“Are you going to be here long?”
“I don’t know. It depends.”
“Perhaps something might turn up. In case it should, where could I reach you?”
I took a card that had only my name on it, and wrote the name of the building and the number of the room in which Bertha Cool had her office. I said, “A letter sent to me there will be delivered.”
She studied the card for a minute, tucked it in her purse, and smiled at me. I helped her on with her coat and took her home in the agency car. She lived in a two-storey frame building that needed paint. There was no sign in front intimating that it was a rooming-house, so I figured she was living with a private family. I didn’t bother too much about it because I knew I could find out all about her any time I wanted to. As she herself had said, the people in that town knew more about her business than she did.
I could tell from the way she acted she hoped I wasn’t going to try to kiss her good night, and I didn’t.
I got back to the hotel a little before midnight. A cigar made the night clerk communicative. After a while I checked through the register and found the signatures of Miller Cross and Evaline Dell. I figured the addresses were phony, but made a surreptitious note of them just on general principles while the clerk was busy at the switchboard.
When he came back to the desk, we chatted for a while, and he mentioned that Miss Dell had arrived by train, that her trunk had been damaged, and she’d secured affidavits from the hotel porter and the transfer man. He hadn’t heard whether the claim had ever been settled.
I found I could send a wire from the telephone booth, and sent one to Bertha Cool:
Making slow progress. Get complete information on claim against Southern Pacific Railroad Company for damaged trunk shipped to Oakview about three weeks ago. Claim may have been made under name of Evaline Dell. Can I pay twenty-five bucks to party giving helpful information?