“Just what does she threaten to do to me?”

“Threaten?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why, nothing. I’m merely telling you things.”

“Just as a friend, I suppose,” she said sarcastically.

“Just as a friend.”

“Well, just what do you want me to do?”

“Get Morgan Birks to acknowledge service of this summons or else fix things so I can make a service on Birks. After all,” I said, “it’s to your interest to have the divorce go through, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” she countered, and her face was worried. “I wish I did.”

I said nothing.

“How am I supposed to fix it so you can serve the papers?”

“You make a date with Morgan Birks,” I said. “Then you telephone B. L. Cool at Main 6—9321. I come over and serve the papers.”

“And when do I get the pay-off?”

“You don’t get any.”

She threw back her head and laughed. There seemed to be genuine amusement in her laugh. “All right, sweetheart. I wanted to see what made you tick. I’ve found out. Get the hell out of here. Go tell Mrs. Birks she can go jump in the lake. If she wants to mention my name, ask her about her little sweetheart, Archie Holoman. Ask her if she thinks her husband is just a plain damn fool.”

Her laughter followed me out into the corridor.

I went back to where Alma Hunter was waiting for me in the automobile. “See her?” she asked.

“Uh huh.”

“What sort of a girl is she?” she asked curiously.

“Peroxide blonde,” I said. “Easy on the eyes, and hard on the ears.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to go roll my hoop.”

“Wasn’t that what you wanted her to say?”

“Yes, in a way, it was.”

“Why, I thought that was just what you wanted. I thought you wanted her to get hard and kick you out and then lead you to Morgan.”

“I gathered,” I said, “that was the idea.”

“What was it she said you didn’t like?”

“There are some things about being a detective which go against the grain. I suppose a detective has to be something of a heel. At any rate, she seemed to think so.”

For a long moment, Alma Hunter was silent. Then she asked, “Did she sell you on the idea?”

I said, “Yes,” and climbed in the car to sit beside her. After a while I said, “We’d better move the car down to that alley. We can watch just as well from there, and we won’t be so conspicuous.”

She stretched out a neatly shod foot and pushed the starter into action. She drove the car down to the alley entrance, backed it in, found a shady place, and parked. “You’re not a heel,” she said. “You’re nice.”