Atlanta Daily World

SOME SLIPS DON'T SHOW

CHAPTER 13

FOLDED the carbon copies of George Cadott's letters and put them in my pocket. I hurriedly glanced at my wrist watch and gave the desk a frisking.

I knew that I was taking chances, but after all a man has to take chances once in a while, if he is going to do a job for a client.

I found a leather-covered notebook, some six inches by nine and a half. I looked at it. It was a diary. I put it in my pocket.

I couldn't find any more diaries. I left Cadott's apartment, making certain I had left no fingerprints. I stopped at a luggage store and got a brief case. I put the diary, the carbon copies of the letters, and the keys in the brief case.

I took a taxi to the depot at Third and Townsend, popped the brief case in a key locker, put the key to the locker in an envelope, and left the envelope in charge of a waitress at the lunch counter, giving her a dollar and telling her to hold the envelope until I returned.

From that point on I was clean. I could be searched as thoroughly as anyone wanted but there wasn't a thing on me.

I left my rented car parked, took a taxi to the Wisteria Apartments.

I wanted to see Lois Marlow's face when she learned what had happened.

I tiptoed quietly past the Dutton apartment, number 316. I could smell the aroma of coffee coming through the transom and assumed that the Duttons were cooking a late breakfast.

I pressed the button on 329.

Lois Marlow said through the door, "Who is it?"

"Donald Lam," I said.

She hesitated a moment, then I heard the sound of a bolt on the other side of the door. then a safety chain was loosened and the door opened.

Lois Marlow was wearing housecoat, mules, an expression of tolerant good nature and apparently nothing else.

"The demon detective," she said. "Don't you give a girl a chance to get dressed?"

"You're dressed," I told her.

"I'm not dressed. I'm covered."

"Do I talk here in the corridor for everybody to listen to, or do I come in?"

"There is another alternative."

"What?"

"That you don't talk at all."

I simply smiled and said, "I wanted to pay a bet."

"What sort of bet?"

"You bet me I could not find George Cadott. I bet you I could. Now I'm going to go home."

"You didn't find him, did you?"

"Would I be paying otherwise?"

"What did we bet?"

"I don't know." I said, "What did we bet?"

"Come on in." she invited. "I'm always interested in gentlemen who want to pay bets. I have an acquisitive disposition."

She walked over to the davenport, seated herself, crossed her knees, saw my eyes shift, and said, "That's a heck of a lot of leg, isn't it, Donald?"

She uncrossed her legs and pulled the housecoat into place. She reached for a cigarette, tapped the end, scraped a match into flame, took in a deep drag, and said, "I suppose you're one of the eager beaver types and you've been up for hours."

"Not too long."

"Want coffee?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay. I'll put your name in the pot as soon as I finish this cigarette. I want to sit back and relax and take time to figure what it really is that you have in mind."

"Paying a bet," I told her. "Remember?"

"Yes," she said. "I remember. That was the opening gambit."

"Perhaps if I'd make a reasonable payment on the bet, you'd tell me where George Cadott is?"

"I don't know. I told him to make himself scarce."

"And he made himself scarce?"

"Didn't he?"

"Apparently so. I'm wondering just how it happened you could tell him to make himself scarce, and he would act with such complete promptitude and with such docile obedience."

"I told him a private detective was on his trail."

"That bothered him?"

"That bothered him."

"You knew it would?"

"I thought it might."

"Mind telling me why?"

"Look. Donald, I want to sit back and enjoy my cigarette. I want to relax before I start matching wits. Then I want to have some coffee and, if you want to be a nice boy, you can scramble some eggs and cook some bacon while I'm dressing. Then we could have breakfast and sit and talk."

"Well." I said. "settle back and finish your cigarette. However, I have one question I want to ask before you put on the coffee."

She shifted her position slightly, took a deep drag at the cigarette, regarded me speculatively, and said, "What's the question?"

"What started George Cadott on this great crusading venture of his?"

She smiled and said, "That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it?"

"It seems to be."

She ground out the cigarette, said, "Well, I'll put on the coffee."

She got up and went through the door to the kitchenette. I had an opportunity to admire the back of the housecoat. It had nice lines.

I heard the coffeepot being filled with water. then the scrape of metal on the stove, and she was back.

"I like percolated coffee," she said.

"So do I."

"I use the fine-ground coffee. Turn it off as soon as it has given about fifteen spurts through the percolator. I'm going to put on some clothes. You watch the coffeepot."

She went into the bedroom and kicked the door shut with her heel. It didn't quite latch.

"You watching that coffee Donald?" she called through the crack in the door.

"Not yet. A watched pot never boils."

She opened the door, standing there in her slip. The light, streaming through the bedroom window, made an intriguing silhouette.

"Your slip's showing." I said.

She laughed, looked down at the silhouette and said, "Some slips don't show, Donald."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

She laughed and said, "That's one you have to figure out for yourself. You're the detective. I just wanted you to know that some of my slips don't show—at least I hope they don't. Now, go on out and watch that coffee, Bacon and eggs are in the ice-box."

Donald is told: "He murdered his grandfather . . . " Continue the story here tomorrow.

© Erle Stanley Gardner. William Morrow & Co., Inc.