‘Good night, and thanks again.’
12
‘You don’t seem awfully sweet on this guy,’ Tad Cullen said, when Grant had finished this story over the telephone.
‘Don’t I? Oh, well, perhaps it’s just that he doesn’t happen to be what we call my cup of tea. Look, Tad, you’re quite sure that you have no idea, even in the back of your mind, where Bill could have been staying?’
‘I haven’t got a back to my mind. I have just a small, narrow space in front where I keep all that’s useful to me. A few telephone numbers, and a prayer or two.’
‘Well, tomorrow I’d like you to do the round of the more obvious places, if you would.’
‘Yes, sure. I’ll do anything. Anything you say.’
‘All right. Have you got a pen? Here’s the list.’
Grant gave him the names of twenty of the more likely places, going on the assumption that a young man from the wide open spaces and the small towns would look for a caravanserai that was both large and gay and not too expensive. And just for good measure he added a couple of the best-known expensive ones; young men with several months’ back-pay were liable to be extravagant.
‘I don’t think I’d bother with any more than that,’ he said.