Party you inquired about registered here in hotel under own name. Do I get anything out of it? Marian.
I took an envelope from my pocket, wrote across the face of the telegram: Bertha: This is it. I’ll be at the Palace Hotel in Oakview. Better notify our client.
I always carried envelopes stamped with special delivery, addressed to the agency, for use in making reports. I put the telegram in one of the envelopes, sealed it, dropped it into a mailbox, and started north, wishing that Bertha Cool would either get a new car or have cases closer to home — and wondering why the devil, with everyone in the country looking for her and after an absence of more than twenty years, Mrs. James C. Lintig should decide to return to Oakview and register at the Palace Hotel under her own name. I wondered if there was any possibility my advertisement in the paper had been responsible. If so, Mrs. Lintig hadn’t been so very far from Oakview. Which opened a lot of interesting possibilities.
Chapter Three
I got a few hours sleep in an auto camp, reached Oakview early Tuesday morning, and had breakfast at the hotel dining-room. It was a rotten breakfast. I finished the last of my cold coffee and went out to the lobby.
The clerk said, “Why hello, Mr. Lam. Your bag’s here at the desk. We didn’t know whether you intended to check out. You left suddenly. We were — er — concerned about you.”
“You needn’t have been. I’ll pay my bill now.”
He looked at my eye as I handed him some money. “Accident?” he asked.
“No. I was walking through a roundhouse in my sleep. A locomotive hit me.”
He said, “Oh,” and gave me a receipt and my change.