I shook my head.
She started drawing a red, lacquered fingernail across a sheet of letter paper on the desk, then carefully studying the indentation marks the nail had made. Apparently that was the most absorbing thing to do that she had found all day.
I stood there and waited.
Abruptly, she looked up. “Private?”
I nodded.
“What are you after?”
“I want to know who stayed there Tuesday.”
“Why?”
I smiled at her.
She said, “I don’t give out information like that. Running an auto court is a business in itself.”
“Sure it is.”
“I’d have to know why you wanted to know.”
I said, “My business is confidential, too.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
She went back to tracing patterns with the point of her fingernail over the paper.
Abruptly she asked, “Could you keep me out of it?”
I said, “You live here. We live here. I wouldn’t come out to see you this way if I was going to give you a double cross. I’d get the information some other way.”
“How?”
“Having a friendly newspaper reporter or police officer come out.”
She said, “I wouldn’t like that.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
She opened a drawer in the desk, reached in, and after a moment’s search pulled out a card.
It was a registration card. It showed that the cabin had been rented Tuesday night to Ferguson L. Hoy and party, 551 Prince Street, Oakland, and the rental had been thirteen dollars.
I took a small copying camera from my briefcase, set it up on a tripod, turned on an electric light so there would be good illumination, and took a couple of pictures.
“That all?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Now I want to know something about Mr. Hoy.”
She said, “I can’t help you much there. He was just another man, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Young?”
“I wouldn’t remember. Come to think of it, it was one of the women with him who came in. She got a registration card and took it out to him. He was in the car. He signed it and sent back the thirteen dollars in exact change.”
“How many people in the party?”
“Four — two couples.”
“You didn’t see this man well enough to remember him if you saw him again?”
“That’s hard to say. I don’t think so.”
I said, “I was out here yesterday about eleven o’clock.”
She nodded.
I said, “Someone had been in that cabin shortly before I arrived there.”
She shook her head. “That cabin had all been cleaned up and—”
“Someone had been in there shortly before I arrived,” I interrupted.
“I don’t think so.”
“Someone who was smoking a cigarette,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Do the maids smoke?”
“No.”
I said, “There were cigarette ashes on the top of the dresser; just a few that had spilled there.”
“I don’t think — Well, I don’t know. The maids are supposed to wipe off the tops of the dressers when they clean up.”
“I think this had been wiped. The cabin was slick as a pin.”
I took my billfold from my pocket and held it so she could see it.
“Let’s get one of the maids,” I said.
The manager stepped to the door of the office. “They’re down there at the far end. I don’t want to go away where I can’t hear the telephone. If you want to go down to the far end you might ask one of them to step in here. I’d like to have you question her in front of me. We can take them one at a time.”
“Okay by me,” I told her.
I walked out. She started to move even before I was out of the door.
The colored maid was a good-looking, intelligent young woman who seemed to have a good deal of savvy.
“The manager wants to see you,” I told her.
She gave me a searching look and said, “What’s the matter? Is something missing?”
“She didn’t tell me. Just that she wanted to see you.”
“You aren’t accusing me of anything?”
I shook my head.
“You were here yesterday in Number Five?”
“That’s right, I was,” I told her. “And there’s no complaint, but the manager would like to talk to you for a minute.”
I turned and started to the manager’s office and after a moment the girl followed me.
“Florence,” the manager said, when she entered the room, “was anyone in the cabin before this man was in there yesterday? Number Five?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I sat over on a corner of the desk and let one hand move over as though searching for something I could hold on to as a brace. The telephone was there. I let my fingers close around the receiver. It was still warm. The manager had telephoned someone while I’d been down at the far end of the court.
I said to the maid, “Wait a minute. I don’t mean someone who stayed there. I mean someone who came in just for a minute, probably someone who said he’d forgotten something and—”
“Oh,” she said, “that was the gentleman who stayed there Wednesday night. He’d forgotten something. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. Just said to let him in and he’d get it. I told him I didn’t think there was anything in there, but he handed me five dollars and — Lord, I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That’s all right,” I told her. “Now, I want you to describe him. Was he a tall drink of water, about twentyfive or twenty-six, wearing a sport coat and slacks? He—”
“Lord, no,” she interrupted. “This gentleman was wearin’ a leather coat and a cap with lots of gold braid.”
“Military?” I asked.
“Like the swells on yachts,” she said. “But he sure was tall and string-bean-like.”
“He gave you five dollars?”
“That’s right.”
I gave her five dollars and said, “There’s the mate to it. How long was he in there?”
“He wasn’t in there more’n long enough to just turn around and come back. I heard a couple of drawers opening and closing and then he was right out all covered with grins. I asked him if he’d found what he’d lost and he laughed and said after he got in there he remembered he’d put it in the pocket of his other suit and packed his suit in the suitcase. He said he was kind of absent-minded, and jumped in his car and drove off.”
“Do you know he stayed there in that cabin Wednesday night?”
