Top of the Heap

“Oh, nothing. I just mentioned it.”

I said, “Uh-huh,” and kept quiet.

She finished with my hands, doing a lot of thinking.

“I’ll have to run up to my apartment,” she said.

“Okay. You want me to come along or shall I pick you up there later?”

“Why don’t you come on up?”

“Promise you won’t give me any sleeping-pills?”

“I’ll promise.” She laughed. “Millie won’t be there. She’s the one that did the dirty work.”

“Must have been quite a joke.”

“It was. I was half mad at the time because I liked this boy, but honestly, Donald, it certainly was funny!

“He was very much the man about town and the daddy of the party. He was just beginning to get really interested in me when this drink took effect. Then he started to make me a proposition in a sleepy sort of a way and went by-by right in the middle of it.

“Millie and I put him to bed on the couch and he was dead to the world until morning when we wakened him for breakfast. You should have seen the expression on his face when he woke up and realized the night and the opportunity had both completely passed.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“I’ll bet it was funny,” I said. “Where did all this take place?”

“In an auto court. Millie is never one to overlook a golden opportunity. She asked this fellow about where the good auto courts were, so of course he volunteered to take us out and show us, and that meant he registered, and that meant he paid the money.”

“Well, at least he got a good night’s sleep for his invest- ment,” I commented.

That made her laugh again. “Come on, Donald. I’ll take you up to my apartment and buy you a drink. Then we’ll go out.”

“Do we walk or take a cab?”

“It’s about six blocks,” she said.

“We take a cab,” I told her.

We walked out to the curb. “While we’re waiting for a cab,” I asked casually, “where was this court?”

“Out on Sepulveda.”

“When was all this?”

“Why, let’s see — Why, Donald, that was Tuesday night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why, of course. Why, what difference would it make?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was just wondering about your vacation.”

“Well, that’s the way it was.”

A taxi pulled in to the curb. Sylvia gave him the address and we settled back in the cushions. At that time of night running six blocks involved a lot of stopping and starting.

“The three of you in the one cabin?”

“Uh-huh. It was a nice double cabin.”

“You had one room, Millie had the other, and you parked this boy on the couch?”

“That’s right. Sort of a davenport.”

“Wouldn’t that make up into a bed also? That’s usually the way in those motor courts.”

“Oh, I guess so, but we didn’t bother. We just parked him, took his shoes off, and I donated a pillow from my bed.”

“Any blankets?”

“Don’t be silly! We put his overcoat over his feet and locked our doors. If he woke up and got cold he could call a taxi and go home.”

“Where,” I asked, “do we eat?”

She said, “I know a nice restaurant. It’s out a ways, but—”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “Only I have a reservation on the ten o’clock plane.”

“Tonight, Donald?” she asked, with keen disappointment in her voice.

I nodded.

She snuggled over close to me and slipped her hand into mine.

“Oh, well,” she said. “You’ll have plenty of time — to eat and catch your plane.”

Chapter Four

Elsie Brand poked her head into my private office and said, “Bertha has the client in her office. He’s asking if there’s anything new.”

“Tell Bertha I’ll be right in.”

She looked at me curiously. “Do any good in San Francisco last night?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Nice trip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Find Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“How was she?”

“Up to specifications.”

“Oh.”

Elsie Brand retired to her office and pulled the door shut.

I waited for a few minutes, then went into Bertha Cool’s office.

John Carver Billings the Second seemed to be some- what excited. He was sitting erect in the chair, smoking a cigarette.

Bertha’s eyes glittered as she looked at me. “Are you getting anywhere?”

I said, “The name of the girl who was in the motor court is Sylvia Tucker. She’s employed as a manicurist in a Post Street barbershop in San Francisco. She has an apartment about six blocks from where she works. She’s a cute babe. She remembers the occasion perfectly and is about half sore at her girlfriend for slipping the sodium amytal in Billings’s drink.”

“Do you mean you’ve found her? You’ve got all that information?” Billings exclaimed, jumping up out of the chair.

“Uh-huh.”

Bertha beamed at me. “Fry me for an oyster!” she said affectionately.

“Well, now that’s Billings said. “You’re sure this is the girl?”

I said, “She told me all about going to Los Angeles on a vacation. How she and her friend, Millie, went out to try and track down some famous movie stars at a night club, how they met you and Millie got you to ‘recommend’ a motor court, and then let you register so you’d be stuck with the bill.

“Sylvia had really fallen for you and was a little bit peeved when Millie put the sleeping-medicine in your drink, terminating the romantic possibilities and destroying your wolfish tendencies for the balance of the night.”

“She told you all that?”

“All of it.”

John Carver Billings the Second jumped up and grabbed my hand, pumping my arm up and down. He clapped me on the back, turned to Bertha, and said, “Now, that’s the kind of work I like! That’s real detective work!”

Bertha unscrewed the cap, and handed him her fountain pen.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What? Oh.”

He laughed, sat down, and made out a check for five hundred dollars.

Bertha beamed as though she wanted to kiss both of us.

I handed Carver a neatly typed report. “This tells how we found Sylvia Tucker,” I said, “what her story is,