“Now, look here,” I objected, “if Morgan Birks should happen to be hanging around the hotel and sees you drive up, it’ll just be too bad. We’ll never get a chance to serve him again.”

“I understand that,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”

“You can’t be careful. You can’t tell whether you’ll run into him in the lobby, in the elevator, or in the corridor. He may be watching the place now for all you know. He—”

“You shouldn’t have let Alma share the room with you,” Sandra Birks said in a dignified voice. “After all, you know, Mr. Lam, this thing may come up in court.”

“Bosh. I’m simply serving papers,” I said.

“I’m afraid,” she cooed, “you don’t understand. Alma simply can’t afford to have her name in the papers. Bleatie and I will be right up. Good-by.” And the telephone clicked.

I hung up the receiver, took off my coat, washed my face and hands, sat down in the chair, and lit a cigarette. Someone knocked on the door. Before I could get up, the bellboy opened it and said, “Here you are, Mrs. Helforth.”

Alma came in, saying, in a voice she tried to keep casual, “Hello, dear. I thought I’d better park the car before I came in. They’re going to deliver some packages for me later on.”

I walked over to the bellboy whose expression showed that Alma’s amateurish attempt at domestic deception was giving him a quiet laugh. “Some other people are coming in,” I said. “They’ll probably be here within ten or fifteen minutes. I want that gun before they get here.”

“I’ll have to have some money. I—”

I gave him the two tens and a five. “Make it snappy,” I said, “and don’t forget the shells. Have it done up in brown paper. Don’t give the package to anyone but me. Get started.”

“On my way,” he said, and shot out of the door.

“What gun are you talking about, the one you were getting for me?” Alma asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Sandra and Bleatie are coming up here. Your friend Sandra seems to think I’ve irrevocably ruined your good name in letting you in on this. She refers to it as ‘sharing my room.’ ”

Alma laughed. “Good old Sandra,” she said, “is so scrupulously careful about protecting my good name, yet she—”

“And yet she does what?” I asked as her voice faded out like a distant radio station.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Come on, let’s have it.”

“No, nothing. Honestly, I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Much,” I said. “I’d like to know what Sandra does.”

“It isn’t important.”

“Anyway, she’s coming up here. Before she arrives, I want to take a look at your neck.”

“At my neck?”

“Yes, at those bruises. I want to see something.”