“I will,” she promised. “I’ll have him there in ten minutes—wherever it is.”
Outdoors, I went up the road, hunting for Dick and Myra Banbrock. Neither was in sight. Passing the bushes that masked the yellow house, I went on, circling down a stony path to the left. No sign of either.
I turned back in time to see Dick going into our flat. I followed.
“She’s in,” he said when I joined him. “She went up the road, cut across through some bushes, came back to the edge of the cliff, and slid feet-first through a cellar window.”
That was nice. The crazier the people you are sleuthing act, as a rule, the nearer you are to an ending of your troubles.
Reddy arrived within a minute or two of the time his wife had promised. He came in buttoning his clothes.
“What the hell did you tell Althea?” he growled at me. “She gave me an overcoat to put over my pajamas, dumped the rest of my clothes in the car, and I had to get in them on the way over.”
“I’ll cry with you after awhile,” I dismissed his troubles. “Myra Banbrock just went into the joint through a cellar window. Elwood has been there an hour. Let’s knock it off.”
Pat is deliberate.
“We ought to have papers, even at that,” he stalled.
“Sure,” I agreed, “but you can get them fixed up afterward. That’s what you’re here for. Contra Costa county wants her—maybe to try her for murder. That’s all the excuse we need to get into the joint. We go there for her. If we happen to run into anything else—well and good.”