up an' clearin' out. I go over to the sideboard an' I give myself a shot of bourbon. I stick around for about ten minutes, an' then Periera comes back an' says everything is OK. He says would I like to go along to his office, we can talk easier there. I follow after him along the balcony, an' we go into his room. Fernandez is sittin' at the table drinkin' a highball an' smokin' a cigarette. He looks up as we go in.
'Well, Mr Caution,' he says, 'it's turned out the way I thought it was going to turn out. I always knew she done it. Have a drink?'
I tell him yes. Periera hands me a cigarette an' lights it for me.
'I reckon I have played it the only way I could play it,' I tell 'em. 'It's stickin' outa foot to me that this dame Henrietta was the woman who got outa that car, started it up again an' sent it over the edge of the wharf, but I wasn't certain of that till tonight. I got a wire from New York tonight that tells me that the maid Marie Dubuinet an' the night watchman on Cotton's Wharf identified them clothes she was wearin'. That's good enough for me an' it ties the job up.'
'An' you reckon she done the counterfeitin'?' asked Fernandez.
'No,' I say, 'she didn't do it, but she got somebody else to do it for her. Who that is I don't know, but maybe when I talk to her tomorrow mornin' down at the jail, she'll feel inclined to do a little real talkin'. Maybe she can make it a bit easier for herself.'
Fernandez gets up an' pours himself out another highball. This guy is lookin' pretty well pleased with himself.
'I'm surely sorry for that dame,' he says. 'I reckon that she has got herself inta a bad jam, an' one that'll take a lotta brains to get her out of.'
'You're tellin' me,' I say, 'but you never know where you are with dames. Say listen, Fernandez,' I go on, 'what was the big idea in you callin' yourself Fernandez an' comm' out here after Aymes died?'
He looks up an' grins.
'I hadta do something,' he says, 'an' I'd met Periera here, before, when I was out here a year ago drivin' Aymes. An' I call myself Fernandez because it don't sorta hurt so much as my real name - Termiglo.'
He gives me a fresh sorta look.
'Anything else you'd like to know?' he says.
'Yeah,' I tell him. 'The night Aymes died you wasn't on duty, was you?'
He stubs out his cigarette.
'No, I wasn't,' he said. 'I was just stickin' around. So what?'
'Oh, nothin',' I tell him, 'but I thought that maybe you could let me know where you was. I suppose you musta spent the evenin' somewhere an' I suppose that somebody musta seen you.'
He laughs.
'Sure,' he says. 'If you gotta know I took Henrietta's maid, Marie, to the movies. I didn't know I hadta have an alibi.'
'You don't have to have an alibi, Fernandez,' I tell him. 'I just sorta wanta know where everybody was on that evenin', that's all.'
He looks at Periera sorta quick. I walk over to the side table an' give myself a drink. I am just imbibin' this liquor when the telephone bell rings. Fernandez picks up the receiver an' then looks at me.
'It's for you,' he says. 'Metts, the Palm Springs Chief of Police, wants you.'
'Say listen, Lemmy,' says Metts. 'There's a marriage threatenin' around here an' I wanta know what I oughta do about it. I suppose it's OK?'
'What are you talkin' about, Metts,' I ask him. 'Who's goin' to marry who an' why, an' what's it got to do with me? I thought that maybe somebody else had got committin' some crime or something. Who is it that's goin' screwy an' wantin' to get hitched up?'
'It's Henrietta an' Maloney,' he says. 'When they got back here Maloney says that you have pinched Henrietta for killin' Aymes an' on a counterfeitin' charge as well, an' that you're a heel. He says that she's broke - she ain't got any dough at all, an' that you're framin' her. He says that he reckons the best thing he can do is to get married to her so's there'll be somebody to look after her an' get her a lawyer an' generally hang around. He says that he's talked it over with her an' she's so het up that she's prepared to agree to anything.
'Well, what could I say. They both been resident here an' they're entitled to marry, so I rang up the Justice an' he's comm' around here in about half an hour to tie 'em up. After a bit I sorta got the idea that maybe you oughta know something about this an' so I called through.'
'Thanks a lot, Metts,' I say. 'Don't you worry about it. I'm comm' back right now, an' I reckon I'm goin' to stop this marriage pronto. Say, what the hell does Maloney think he's doin' usin' your police office as a marriage bureau?
'Don't you say anything until I get around. Just stall 'em an' play 'em along, but don't you let any marriages take place around there. Got me?'
He says he gets me, an' scrams.
I put the telephone down.
'Fernandez,' I say, 'I often been wonderin' why you was so keen to get yourself hitched up to Henrietta an' then suddenly shied off. I suppose it was because you thought that she'd had a hand in this counterfeitin'?'
He nods.
'That's the way it was,' be says. 'An' when you come gumshoem' around here it began to look to me like she knew a durn sight more about Aymes' death than a lot of us thought, so I sorta laid off.'
'I got it,' I tell him. 'Well, I gotta scram now, but there's just one little thing I gotta say to you guys an' that is that I'll probably have to ask both of you to take a trip back to New York with me tomorrow. I reckon that you're both goin' to be material witnesses in this case against Henrietta. Anyhow, I reckon the DA ought to hear what you gotta say.'
Periera starts a lot of stuff about not being able to leave the Hacienda, but Fernandez shuts him up.
'If we gotta go we gotta go,' he says. 'An' personally speakin' a few days in New York at the government's expense wouldn't be so bad neither.'
'OK,' I say. 'Well the pair of you had better be ready to go back there with me tomorrow. If you got any business to clean up here you better get it fixed. We oughta be leavin' pretty early in the mornin'. Welt so long, I'll be seem' you.'
I scram. I get outside an' start the car up. I drive pretty fast for half a mile an' then look out for the cop that I fixed with Merts to have waitin' for me. In a minute I see him, sittin' behind a joshua tree off the road.
'Get along the Hacienda Altmira as quick as you can,' I tell him. 'Come in by the back way, an' keep your mount under cover. Don't let 'em see you. Watch the place. There's only Periera an' Fernandez inside. If they come out an' go any place tail 'em, but I don't reckon they will. I reckon they'll be stickin' around. I'll be back in pretty near an hour or so.'
He says OK an' he scrams.
I drive on. I go whizzin' along the road to Palm Springs like somebody has put hot lead in my pants, an' I am hurryin' because I reckon I gotta stop this marryin' nonsense on the part of Henrietta an' Maloney.
But when I come to think this thing out, I sorta realise that I don't really give a continental durn if Henrietta does marry Maloney. It won't make any difference anyhow, except that k might sorta be inconvenient havin' regard to one or two things that I got in mind about that dame.
My old mother always usta tell me that there was only one thing worse than one dame an' that is two dames. I reckon King Solomon musta been nuts. Just fancy stickin' around with four hundred dames an' tryin' to play ball with the whole outfit. Still you gotta admit that these old time guys had got something an' if you read your history books why I reckon you gotta say that as the centuries go rollin' by guys just get more and more indifferent all the time. Maybe you reckon that this English guy, Henry the Eighth, was a real he-man, just because he had six wives, but if you compare him with King Solomon he is nothin' but a big sissy. What's six against four hundred?
When I get to Metts' house, I bust right into his room an' he is sittin' behind the desk waitin' for me an' smokin' a pipe that smells like it was loaded with onions.
'What's all this hooey about Henrietta marryin' Maloney?' I ask him.
He grins.
'Maloney brings her back here,' he says, 'an' she is all burned up about bein' pinched for killin' Granworth an' she hasn't got any dough an' reckons that she won't be able to get a lawyer So Maloney says he reckons that if they
