Elsie Brand didn’t bother to look up from her typing as I crossed the outer office.
The agency car was an antiquated heap with tyres worn down pretty close to the fabric. It had a leaky radiator, front wheels that developed a bad shimmy at anything above fifty, and so many rattles the engine knocks were almost drowned out. It was a hot day, and I had trouble getting over the mountains. It was hotter in the valley, and my eyes began to feel like hard-boiled eggs. The hot glare from the road cooked them right in their sockets. I couldn’t get hungry enough to make stopping worth while, but grabbed a hamburger along the road, ate with one hand, and drove with the other. I made Oakview at ten-thirty that night.
Oakview was in the foothill country, and it was cooler up there, with moisture in the air, and mosquitoes. A river came brawling out of the mountains to snake smoothly past the foothill country around Oakview, and spread out on the plains below.
Oakview was a county seat which had gone to seed. They rolled up the sidewalks at nine o’clock. The buildings were all old. The shade trees which lined the streets were old. The place hadn’t grown fast enough to give the city fathers an excuse to widen the streets and rip out the trees.
The Palace Hotel was open. I got a room and rolled in.
Morning sun streaming through the window wakened me. I shaved, dressed, and got a bird’s-eye view of the town from the hotel window. I saw a court-house of ancient vintage, got a glimpse of the river through the tops of big shade trees, and looked down on an alley full of old packing-cases and garbage cans.
I looked around for a place to eat breakfast, and found a restaurant that looked good on the outside, but smelled of rancid grease on the inside. After breakfast I sat on the steps of the court-house and waited for nine o’clock.
The county officials came straggling leisurely in. They were mostly old men with placid faces — browsing along the streets, pausing for choice morsels of gossip. They gave me curious stares as they climbed past me up the steps. I was a stranger. They knew it and showed they knew it.
In the county clerk’s office an angular woman of uncertain age stared at me with black, lacklustre eyes, listened to my request, and gave me the great register of 1918 — a paper-backed volume starting to turn yellow. Its fuzzy-faced type indicated a political plum had been handed to a local newspaper.
Under the L’s, I found: Lintig: — James Collitt, Physician, 419 Chestnut Street, age 33, and Lintig: — Amelia Rosa, Housewife, 419 Chestnut Street. Mrs. Lintig hadn’t given her age.