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“I wouldn’t know. It’s quite possible we have several.”

I frowned and said, “This is the address I have and it should be here, a dark-blue sedan.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

“Could you find out for me?”

“I’m afraid not. We don’t spy on our tenants.”

“I don’t want you to spy on anyone. I just want a little information. I could get a list of tenants and look up the registrations.”

“Then why don’t you do that, Mr. Lam?”

“Because I can save time this way.”

“Time,” he said, “is money.”

I said, “In this case there isn’t much money.”

“Then you should have lots of time.”

I said, “I’ll see what I can do and come back.”

“Do that.”

I walked out, got in the taxicab, and went back to my hotel. I went up to my room, waited ten minutes, got in a cab, went out to Sutro Baths, and had myself a nice swim. When I got out of the baths I took a cab and started back along Geary Street. When I reached the cross street I wanted I paid off the cab and walked around the block. When I made sure no one was following me I stepped into a drugstore, called another cab, and went to the address of John Carver Billings. A maid answered my ring.

I said, “I’m Donald Lam from Los Angeles. I want to see John Carver Billings the Second, and you can tell him it’s urgent and important.”

“Just a moment,” she said.

She looked at my card, then took the precaution of closing the door while she vanished inside the house. Two minutes later she was back and said, “Come in.”

I went through a reception hall into a big drawingroom, and John Carver Billings the Second came forward to meet me. He was not at all pleased to see me.

“Why, hello, Lam! What the hell are you doing up here?”

“Working.”

“I thought your agency did a very fine job for me,” he said, “but that’s all done — finished. Pau, as they say in Hawaii.”

He didn’t ask me to sit down.

I said, “I have another matter I’m working on.”

“If there’s anything in which I can assist you I’ll be glad to do what I can.” His voice was like cold linoleum on bare feet.

I said, “I’m investigating a hit-and-run case up here. The police are interested in it.”

“You mean the police hired a private detective from Los Angeles to—”

“I didn’t say that. I said the police were interested.”

“In a hit-and-run case?”

“Yes.”

“They should be.”

“A fellow down on the corner of Post and Polk Streets,” I said, “hit a man and broke him up a bit, then kept right on going. Someone tried to follow him and ran into a car that was just pulling out from the curb. That enabled the guy to make a getaway — temporarily.”

“What are you trying to do? Find the fellow?”

“I think I know who he is,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “I’m trying to find some way of fixing it up for him now.”

“Well, I can’t say I wish you any luck. These hit-and-run drivers are a menace. Was there anything else, Lam?”

I said, “Yes. Let’s have a little talk.”

“I’m rather busy now. I’m in conference with my father and—”

I said, “If you were sick and walked into a doctor’s office and asked him to give you a prescription for penicillin, he gave you one with no questions asked and let you walk out, what would you think?”

“I’d think he was a hell of a doctor. Is that what you want me to say?”

“That’s what I want you to say.”

“All right. I’ve said it.”

I said, “That’s what you did. You walked into a detective agency, described the medicine you wanted, and then walked out.”

“I gave you a very specific assignment, if that’s what you mean. There wasn’t any medicine and I wasn’t sick.”

“You may not have thought and temperature.”

“Just what are you driving at, Lam?”

I said, “You fixed up a fake alibi, then you went out and planted it. You wanted us to uncover it for you. In that way you could act very innocent and say that you’d paid good money to get a detective agency to find the people who—”

“I don’t think I like your attitude, Lam.”

“The weakness of such a scheme,” I went on, “is that you don’t dare to approach a perfect stranger. You have to get someone you’re friendly with, and then your friendship for that person can be proven. Furthermore, in order to make Sylvia a fallen woman in name only, as well as to bolster your alibi, you insisted on having two people, so Sylvia got her friend Millie.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Because I don’t.”

“And,” I went on, “after you’d made certain we were going to handle the case and everything was all fixed, you went dashing out to that motor court, put on a leather jacket and gold-braided cap, and went in where you could plant the evidence for me to find.

“I don’t know just how it happened that you picked that particular motor court. You may have stayed there before and thought there was a little something phony about it, or you may have just picked one at random.

“Now,” I went on, “if I knew what you were trying to cover up on Tuesday night, I might That’s what we’re for. To help you if we can.”

He said, very slowly, in cold anger, “I’d been warned about private detectives. I’d been told they tried to blackmail clients if they could get anything on those clients. I see now the warning was one that I should have heeded. I shall instruct my bank the first thing Monday morning to dishonor that check which was given to your agency. I am sending your agency a wire that payment on the check has been stopped. I don’t appreciate your meddling in my private affairs; I don’t appreciate your attempt at blackmail; and I don’t like you.”

I played the last card. “Your dad,” I said, “might resent it if his son received a lot of publicity as being the driver of the hit-and-run car. There is always the chance that we can square these things and—”

“Just a minute,” he said, “wait right there, Lam. I have something for you. That last remark really gave me an idea. Wait right there, don’t go away.”

He turned and left the room.

I walked over to a comfortable chair and sat down.

Steps sounded, a door opened, and Billings was back in the room with an older man.

“This is my father,” he said. “I have no secrets from him. Dad, this is Donald Lam. He’s a private detective from Los Angeles. I hired his firm to find out the people who were with me Tuesday night in a motor court in Los Angeles. He did an excellent job of getting the people located. I have his report here in writing showing that he located and talked with at least one of them, and that everything is exactly as I reported it to him.

“I gave his agency a check for a five-hundred-dollar bonus in accordance with an understanding I made with them. I am not at all certain it was ethical for me to do that. I think perhaps that constituted a contingency fee and may be a breach of ethics on the part of the agency.

“Now he shows up and tries to blackmail me. He accuses me of having tried to fake an alibi and is intimating that I was mixed up in a hit-and-run charge Tuesday night, some accident which I believe occurred near Post and Polk. What shall I do?”