I’d been hoping he’d go out for a sandwich, now that we dared to use the passenger elevators, so that I could sneak a preview of the landlord biting his fingernails in seclusion, but no. Slim fixed his deep eyes on me and said, “We’ll see what Tom has been doing recently. Do you realize he hasn’t been in the picture but once in five days?”

Tom was it, all right. We trailed him that night to a big apartment house across town. Yes, it was a blonde, only this one had had considerable help from a bottle of peroxide.⁠ ⁠…

Slim made a deal with Mrs. Ellingbery’s lawyers. We were to get five triple-o’s if Mrs. Ellingbery won. So Slim spent the weekend trailing Tom for the past three months while I wrote it all down like a chronological history of the war. I was tickled over July the Fourth. On July the Fourth, Tom and the bleached blonde started out with a popcorn picnic and wound up⁠—you guess. Riding the roller coaster! I could just imagine what old Judge Monday would say to that; that little scene would be worth half of the property settlement.

We were short on time. Some way or another Tom Ellingbery had rushed the trial, and it was set for August 30. We turned over our notes to Mrs. Ellingbery’s lawyers and sat back and waited. Private investigators never go near the courts unless they have to.

At four thirty that day the telephone rang. Slim listened, then he hung up. “Tom has got a couple of shrewd, tough lawyers,” he said. “We have to go to court. Tom isn’t admitting anything and he isn’t taking any bluffs. He demands proof.”

“Well,” I said, “for five M notes I’ll tell everything.”

Slim was worried. He talked to her lawyers, Youngquist and Rubicam, that night. The next morning we were both in court. It was direct examination. Slim identified himself, then he was asked: “You have investigated Tom Ellingbery’s activities over the past three months?”