A gruff, masculine voice from behind the partition said, “Marian.”
She slid off the stool and walked back of the partition. I heard the rumble of a low-pitched voice, and after a while a word or two from her. I retrieved the file of papers and turned to the December second issue. In the gossip column was a paragraph to the effect that Mrs. James Lintig planned to spend the Christmas holidays with relatives “in the East” and was leaving by train for San Francisco where she would take a boat through the Canal. In answer to queries about the status of the divorce action, she had stated that the matter was entirely in the hands of her lawyers, that she had no information as to the whereabouts of her husband, and branded as “absurd and false” a rumour that she had learned of her husband’s whereabouts and was planning to rejoin him.
I waited for the girl to come back out. She didn’t show up. I went to a corner drugstore and looked in the telephone directory under Attorneys. I found no Gillfoil, no Poste & Warfield, but there was a Frank Warfield having offices in the First National Bank building.
I walked two blocks down the shady side of a hot street, climbed rickety stairs, walked down a corridor slightly out of plumb, and found Frank Warfield with his feet on a desk littered with law books, smoking a pipe.
I said, “I’m Donald Lam. I want to ask a few questions. Do you remember a case of Lintig versus Lintig which was handled by—”
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you,” I asked, “tell me anything about the present whereabouts of Mrs. Lintig?”
“No.”
I thought back over Bertha Cool’s instructions, and decided to take a chance on my own.
“Do you know anything about the whereabouts of Dr. Lintig?”