wanted to know if anyone was outside looking for the registration card on my steering post. I didn’t keep it there, but I had license plates.
I stood up and said, “We need at least one person to a square block, Mrs. Johnston.” I turned and walked toward the hall. I heard her rise and she said: “Mr Flood, I…”
I turned at the archway and said loudly, with a wider smile and a cock of my head, “Think it over, Mrs. Johnston. I know you’ll be a real addition to our group.”
She had a hand up and her lips were parted, ready to say something when I stopped.
I went right on: “I don’t insist on an answer now, Mrs. Johnston. Talk to your husband about it.” I turned and started for the front door. “And thanks for your time. I know you’re busy.…”
I went out the door. Coming up the flagstone path was the gray-haired maid. She jumped a little when she saw me and tried to pull herself into the dress like a turtle as she squeezed past me.
“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “I stole the car from a gray-haired old lady.”
She hurried into the house without looking at me or saying anything.
I walked out and drove away. My license plates didn’t tell me whether anybody had been looking at them or not.
CHAPTER III
PORTLAND lives on one side of the deep Willamette river and works and does its shopping on the other, so it is a city of bridges, some of them broad swaggering structures of concrete and steel, and others ancient draw-bridges that look as if they are weeping over the city.
Jefferson High School was far out on the east side of the river, an aged building with little greenery around it and a tired look under the eyes. The halls were empty, and sick with the old odor of schools. The office was of the standard pattern, the long bar-high counter cutting the room in half, the windows on the office side, the relentless glare on the other. There were three women shuffling papers behind the counter. I leaned on it and my foot felt instinctively for a rail. One of the women came toward me and I told her I would like a little routine information on a Miss Margaret Bleeker who graduated in 1937.
She said I would have to wait until Mr. Dolles, the Vice Principal, was back. He was at a meeting.
I showed her my buzzer.
“Los Angeleez, heh? You’ll still have to wait.”
I thanked her and decided to wait outside. I walked out and down the oiled, bitten hallway. I was on the stairs outside when I heard it: “Just a moment, sir!” I turned, and a woman came through the archway and trotted toward me.
She was forty, a little more, a little less, and thin. She had flat cheeks and a retiring chin that made her face look as if it were in full retreat. Her eyes protruded uneasily, and were the color and brilliance of cigarette smoke.
She said, breathlessly: “I didn’t want to leave the office too soon.”
“I see.”
She smiled. She had nice big teeth. “Miss Hurkette doesn’t like men,” she whispered. “Mr. Dolles is at a meeting all right—in Seattle.” She giggled and looked over her shoulder.
“How does she act when she hates somebody?”
The eyes swelled. “Oh terrible!” she said. “But I can help you. We all remember Margaret Bleeker. What’s she done?”
I had been edging down the stairs. I came back up again now. She was looking at me eagerly, and there was a vague light dancing behind the opaqueness of her eyes.
“You tell me first,” I said. “What was she like?”
“Well, she was expelled when she was a freshman for getting terribly drunk at a Hi-Y dance.”
“But she settled down later, huh?”
“Oh no. She learned to hold her liquor.” She clapped her hand to her mouth and giggled again.
“Quite a young lady.”
“She was beautiful. When she was a junior she got one of our chemistry teachers in trouble.”
“You mean one of the chemistry teachers got her in trouble, don’t you?”
She shook her head solemnly and said. “She was perfectly innocent. It was in the laboratory. He made her stay after class… She reported him.” She put a bony hand on my arm, looked over her shoulder again, and hissed: “What’s she done?”
“One more thing. Where’d she live?”
“Oh, down in Albina. A terrible district.”
“Can you get me the address?”
“But she’s been gone so long. She sang at Keller’s after she graduated—Keller’s Hofbrau, down on Broadway,” she added, when she saw the gleam in my eye. “Now, what happened to her?”
“A man in Seattle left $10,000 to someone named Margaret Bleeker. We’re just running down a lead.”
Her long face grew longer, and the eyes grayer. “Ohhhh,” she said hoarsely. She turned and ran back into the building.
* * * *
IT WAS raining when I got back to the Willamette Hotel on Fourth Street. I went up to my room and decided to put off going to Keller’s Hofbrau until later in the evening—it sounded like that kind of a place. I undressed and hung my coat and pants up to dry and lay on the bed and watched the wet unwholesome twilight creep into the room and huddle in the dark corner.
After a while I got up and turned on the lights and called the bell captain.
“I’d like to ease the inner writhing a bit,” I said. “Where can I get something to eat?”
“Huh?”
“Something to take the sting out of living. You know, whiskey, champagne, buttermilk laced with gasoline—whatever you can get me.”
“Oh. Oh yeah. We got state control here y’know. It’ll cost ya extra.”
“See if you can find some ice and soda to go with it.”
It came up five minutes later on a covered tray carried by a pale little man with brown welts under his eyes and a skin like a filefish. He set it down on the dresser, handed me a bill, and silently disapproved of the color of my shorts. He took his money, pocketed a dollar tip, gave me an obscene smile, and went out. It was good bond bourbon and I made a tall one and took it into the bathroom with me and crawled into a hot tub.
The drink was gone and I was rubbing myself down and wondering if I needed a shave. Through the bathroom door I heard another door open, and then close. I didn’t hear anything else. I put the shorts on and opened the bathroom door.
She was standing uncertainly in the middle of the room, a damp chubby across one arm, and a blue silk dress doing a nice job of covering but not concealing her round little body. The dress was too short, the heels too high, the legs too white and shaven. She had a wide smile that almost swallowed up her face, and her hair was like autumn corn silk after a rain. She looked about sixteen.
“Oh, there you are,” she said politely.
I didn’t say anything.
“Where ja get the nice tan?”
I said: “Baby, there’s been a mistake. I didn’t send for anybody.”
The smile faded and her face reddened just a little. “You didn’t? The bell cap…”
“He jumped at conclusions.”
“Oh,” weakly.
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.” I pointed to the dresser. “There’s some makings over there, help yourself.” I climbed into my trousers and picked